Exile
by sallybeth631
Summary: After Ben Solo turns his back on the First Order, aiding the Resistance in one of their pivotal battles following the events of The Last Jedi, both he and Rey are sent into exile, Ben for his crimes against the galaxy when he was Kylo Ren, Rey for defending him in his trial. They are sent to a far out forest/mountain planet where they learn about each other, themselves, andtheForce
1. Chapter 1: Exile

_**Chapter One: Exile**_

The Resistance officials decided that due to Kylo Ren's extensive and abominable crimes against the galaxy and the Republic, and Rey's support of Ben Solo when he finally turned his back on the First Order, both of them would be exiled together on a remote but habitable forest planet called Laris until such time as the Resistance deemed their sentence to have been fulfilled. Leia, of course, pulled as many strings as she possibly could without infringing on the democracy she so passionately believed in, managing to narrow their sentence down to five years at the most for Ben, a year at the most for Rey.

But Rey had told Leia that it wasn't necessary for her to decrease her own sentence; she was prepared to spend as much time as she could with the man with whom she shared a Force bond. They both still had so many questions, and they knew that the best way to answer them was if they could be alone together, where the disruptions of war, politics, and everything else wouldn't get in their way.

On her last day with the Resistance, Rey said a heartfelt goodbye to all of her friends. Finn, Poe, and Rose had all finally come to understand, if somewhat reluctantly, why she was meant to be with Ben, and that he was truly more human than they had all previously thought. They still couldn't understand half of what this mysterious connection between the two Force-users meant, but they'd accepted it as Rey's friends.

During Rey and Ben's exile, they were allowed correspondence with off-worlders via hologram only. They would be allowed visitors on Laris for one week at the end of each year. That meant that Rey and Ben would be alone for 1,825 days, and she could only see her friends for 25 of them. The thought made her feel weak and sorrowful, but when she reminded herself that she would be with Ben, she felt stronger. She knew Ben would never have forced her to stay apart from the people she loved most in the galaxy. But of course, it wasn't his decision to make.

The last thing Rey did was embrace Finn, the first friend she'd ever had, the one who'd stuck by her, who'd never given up on her after all this time. Even when she told him of her connection to Ben Solo, he never once faltered. He believed in her like no one else ever did. Rey would miss him the most.

"Just be careful out there, Rey," Finn said into Rey's neck as they hugged.

"I will, Finn."

"Especially with Mr. Dark Side Hot Shot over here," said Poe, catching Ben's annoyed glare and responding with a peevish grin.

When the two friends finally parted, Finn turned and looked straight at Ben Solo. "You better take good care of her," he said, not an ounce of humor in his eyes.

"I'll try," said Ben, "but she can take better care of herself."

"That's right," remarked Poe, still trying his best to lighten the mood as only he could.

"We all know Rey's tough enough to handle anything that tries to mess with her. To be honest, I'm slightly worried about her new friend."

"Yeah, what's he gonna do when the going gets rough?" said Rose, chiming in on Poe's teasing vibe, "whip out his big red lightsaber and scream at everything?" They both snickered playfully.

Rey smiled. She knew they were only teasing him, but she could feel Ben growing more uncomfortable, anxious to be alone with her where they could both converse on equal ground. She sent him reassuring thoughts through their bond, and sensed him relax slightly.

"I'm going to miss you all so much," said Rey, tears streaking her face. "I...I just wanted you to know that...I love you all."

"We know, Rey," said Poe with a warm smile.

"Just promise that you'll holomessage us whenever you can," said Rose.

"If you can at all. We all know you'll have plenty to keep you occupied on your little vacation," said Poe, grinning conspiratorially. Rey's cheeks pinked as she picked up on his not-so-innocent innuendo.

Still, it wasn't far from the truth. She and Ben had a lot of things they needed to figure out. For all Rey knew, it may take them five years just to sort through all the mysteries they had to solve.

"I will," said Rey, biting her lip to keep from breaking down right there in front of everyone. Emotional expression wasn't exactly her forte. At least not in the middle of the Resistance docking bay where everyone could see.

"Rey," said Ben, his voice gently urging her to join him, himself silently aware of the pain she felt in that moment. Rey took a deep breath, swiping one last tear from her cheek. She turned away from her friends, taking Ben's outstretched hand, and together they boarded the Falcon.

As soon as they were aboard, Rey pressed the button that made the hatch screech shut. She couldn't bear to look at her friends one last time, knowing that if she did she wouldn't be able to leave them.

In the cockpit, Chewy fired up the engines, snuffling to himself as his paws skimmed skillfully over the panels he knew so well.

Rey was glad that Chewy had been allowed to transport them to Laris. Over the time she'd spent with the gruff but gentle giant, she'd come to think of him almost as a kind of father-figure; Chewy always looked after her, taking her side in every fight (unless she was being unreasonable, which given her hot-headedness happened more frequently than Chewy would have preferred), and sticking by her through thick and thin, as a copilot and a friend. He was the last friend she'd see for five years, and though she knew he'd visit them whenever the Resistance allowed him to, it still felt like it would be forever.

Rey's stomach plummeted as the Falcon lifted off of the ground and began to ascend. Even then, she couldn't help looking out the cockpit window, just to glimpse the figures of her friends growing smaller as they climbed higher. They didn't wave, and Rey knew they'd be watching the Falcon for as long as their eyes could track it as it faded further into the sky.

At last, Rey let the tears come. They seared against her skin, stinging her trembling cheeks, making it progressively harder for her to watch her friends disappear from view, which only made her cry more. Chewy rested his giant paw on her arm, snuffling reassuringly, all too familiar with the kind of pain that had beat itself into her every nerve. Rey instantly felt lightened at the soft touch of her friend.

Once they cleared the planet's atmosphere, quickly fading into the dark emptiness of space, Rey got up to leave the cockpit, startled to find Ben standing in the doorway, his presence no longer a looming threat, but an overwhelming comfort. The devastation that racked her body had momentarily clouded their bond so that she couldn't feel him, even though he was so close to her the whole time. But now that she'd been able to breathe, Ben Solo's presence filled the room and her heart, dissipating the grief almost entirely. He didn't have to say anything. Looking into his eyes, Rey knew he was there for her, only her.

Rey threw herself into his arms, relishing the strength of his warm embrace. She felt so safe and so complete in his arms, she couldn't help but cry again. This time the tears were diluted with a mixture of sadness and relief, and Ben drank them in as she gave them to him. He would hold any burden that she could not carry herself without hesitation. For now, he held all of her, and she let him. For now, it was all she needed.

Chewy laid in the coordinates for Laris, pulling the lever that would activate the ship's powerful hyperdrive. Before Rey could try to copy every inch of the Resistance Base planet to her memory, the view outside the cockpit dissolved into stretching lights and bright-blue static, pulling them to their inevitable destination.


	2. Chapter 2: So Close, And Yet So Far

Chapter Two: So Close, And Yet So Far

With the steady glow of hyperspace sucking the Falcon through space, both Rey and Ben decided to talk alone in the lounge after they'd cleaned themselves up and slipped into more comfortable clothes. After the intense stresses of the day, and of the past week, they both needed a little comfort.

In the bathroom, Rey vigorously splashed her face, furious that the last dregs of tears still leaking from her eyes wouldn't seem to go away. After a few moments of trying to steady her shivering breath, her heart finally slowed enough that she could focus on everything that had happened without fainting.

After Ben Solo had turned against the First Order and they had been able to transport him and Rey safely back to the base, he was immediately taken into custody. Ben hadn't expected them to roll out any kind of welcome mat. Indeed, nothing had crossed his mind as he and Rey stood together on the transport ship, hopelessly entangled in each other's arms, but the smell of her hair, the feel of her cheek pressed against his heart, the strength of her small body as he held her like she was the last drop of humanity left in the universe. She was the only hope he'd ever allowed himself to hold onto. Not since he was a baby, when the only thing he'd craved was the sustenance of his own mother's life force, had he ever needed anyone so much. In that moment he'd silently promised Rey that as long as he still had will in his soul he would never leave her again. Rey promised the same, never once speaking a word out loud. There was no need to. Everything that needed to be said flowed between them through their touch.

Soon they'd both begun to cry, generous tears slipping through the spaces between Rey's trembling face and Ben's heaving chest. Together they crumpled to the floor, stuck together by shared grief and relief. Everything was overwhelming them, as though they were a pebble being tossed about in a sea storm. Yet they held together through it all, fused together by the force of hope and love.

Neither of them had minded the fact that at least half a dozen Resistance soldiers were standing around them, staring at the odd spectacle of two people from opposite sides of a war embracing as though they'd known each other their whole lives. None of them could ever hope to understand all that had transpired between them in a few wordless moments. Light years had torn them apart for longer than either of them could bear, and now that the stars had brought them back to each other, they would not soon come apart again.

Almost as soon as they stepped off the transport ship into the blinding light and chaos of the Resistance's new base, Rey and Ben, though they'd been fiercely holding hands, were ripped from each other, Rey taken by Finn and Poe, both concerned for her safety, Ben shoved to his knees, hands above his head, cuffed, and led away. All the while, he looked at her, his eyes never straying from her face, which now shivered from the sudden cold of tears that stung her cheeks. Rey had tried to run to him, crying out for them to let him go, even though she knew all too well that Ben Solo would have to take responsibility for his crimes. Poe and Finn restrained her with difficulty, both confused as to why she would have such a strange reaction to the man they'd been fighting against being put under arrest. They didn't know. How could they? They hadn't seen what she saw: Hope. Love. Light. Though Rey strained against the tight grip of her friends' hands, Ben's eyes told her that he would be alright. He knew what he must do. He knew that he must answer for what he'd done.

Ben looked over his shoulder at Rey as they led him away. Finn and Poe finally relinquished their hold on her arms. She didn't seem to notice the bruises that had come out on her skin. No pain was greater in that moment than the thought of Ben being brought before a jury of unforgiving faces, all affected in the cruelest ways by the First Order's influence over their lives. Most had lost people they loved to the descending iron fist of the First Order. At last, Rey knew how they felt. And she couldn't bear to think that the same might happen to her. Just when she'd finally found the one person in the whole galaxy who she truly belonged with, the one soul whose life she could not live without. Rey would not let their light be snuffed out so quickly. Not even by her own friends.

Rey had done all she could to save Ben from execution, testifying tirelessly on his behalf to the bemusement of the entire jury. She directed her pleas to General Organa, one of the members of the panel of judges at the trial. Leia was Ben's mother, and strong with the Force. Surely she of all people would understand. And she did. Rey saw it in her eyes, that faint shimmer of hope that only mother's who loved their sons more than life itself could have. Rey gave a fully detailed testimony of how Ben Solo had turned against his own star destroyer, which had been ruthlessly killing off several Resistance pilots, nearly sacrificing himself in the act. Rey had been the one to see this selfless act, and she saved him at the last minute. She'd felt his fear as he sat alone in his tie silencer, thinking he'd never see her again. He'd been content with the thought that whatever happened to him, Rey would be safe, free from the clutches of the First Order, and with one less spark of darkness to worry about. What he didn't know was that Rey could feel everything he felt. And she would not let him die.

As Rey spoke, Leia could not take her eyes off the girl who only a few months ago had been bound and determined to destroy her son for what he'd done to Han Solo. All she could sense now was a love more powerful than the stars themselves radiating from Rey's body and soul, all consuming but not blinding, burning but not devastating. Faint memories of stolen moments of passion between her and Han ran across her mind; even Leia's undying love for her late husband could not have come close to the strength and power of the connection between Rey and Ben.

But that wasn't going to convince the council of Ben Solo's supposed heroism. To that end, several pilots and Resistance members who witnessed the surprising turn of events at the last battle stepped up to testify that they had in fact seen Kylo Ren's tie silencer open fire on the star destroyer. And that after this, he did not rejoin the others who had jumped to hyperspace in order to escape the coming onslaught of Resistance fire. Instead, once the badly damaged destroyer and all it's errant tie fighters had vanished, Kylo Ren's ship hovered in space, as though having lost the will to go on functioning. Then the Millennium Falcon moved into view, towing the fighter away from the floating wreckage towards one of the transport ships.

Leia didn't even have to say anything. The council members simply looked at one another, silently agreeing on their next course of action. Rey and Ben Solo were both taken into custody and placed in adjacent cells to await the judges' final verdict. As the cuffs were snapped onto their wrists, all Rey and Ben could do was look at each other. Endless silent conversations seemed to ricochet back and forth between them with the ease of a gently flowing stream. Leia made sure she'd be the one to escort them to their cells, partly due to her all-consuming need to be as close to her son as she could be, but also because she was intent on understanding the nature of his link with Rey.

Each individual prison cell was separated from the rest of the base by a bullet-proof glass wall, a tiny slot in which would open so that the inmates could receive clothes, blankets, and food. Each adjacent cell was separated from the one next to it by an even thicker metallic wall. Once Rey and Ben had been put into their respective cells, however, the walls seemed to shrink to no more than an inch thick as they pressed their foreheads and their hands against it. They were feeling one another, as though they could have reached through the wall like it was nothing but mist to touch.

The glass walls formed one-way mirrors, such that people outside the cells could see those inside, but not the other way around. For days on end, whenever Leia had time away from her duties, she would come to their cell block and watch them for hours. Even though they couldn't see one another, they seemed to do everything in near-perfect harmony: pacing, sitting, thinking, sleeping. Sometimes they would spend hours leaning against the metal wall in exactly the same spot, sometimes facing the wall. When they slept, they tended to avoid the beds with perfectly good mattresses, opting instead for lying down on the floor right up against the wall. If it weren't for the boundary that separated them they'd be sleeping together. Even in their dreams, they were mirror images of each other, stirring at the same times, almost as if they were having the same dream. The same dream of being trapped in their own prisons, unable to find one another, constantly straining against the ties that kept them chained to stone walls of fear, doubt, hopelessness, the chains that prevented them from running to one another.

It was agonizing to watch them like this, two human beings who, like atoms in the freeness of space, were magnetized to one another, drawn together unavoidably. Ben had done many terrible things, had devastated lives, had broken his mother's heart. Rey's whole life up until a year ago had been utterly devoid of any form of real love. And yet Leia could sense the forces that bound them together as strongly as she'd ever felt anything; they could not be rend apart, no matter how far they were stretched. They could be light years apart and it would be as though they were only in the next room from one another. Just as they were now. So close, and yet so far.

Leia didn't know it, but every time she saw them separated this way, tears would come unbidden to her eyes, and like silent messengers of pain, they left no scar, and yet they seemed to cut her to shreds as they etched rivulettes into her time-worn face. She could barely breathe, and yet she stood watch like a sentry guarding two lost children, unwavering, unshakable, like the love she held for her only son and the daughter she never had.

Eventually, the Resistance council ruled that Ben Solo and Rey would be exiled together on Laris, only being allowed a narrow window of time to be with any friends or family that they still had at the end of each year that they were there.

As Rey stood in the mirror, feeling trapped by the glass that looked back at her with the same face, just as she'd felt trapped in the prison cell they'd put her into on the Resistance base, Rey wondered what all this was for. Not just the sentence, the exile. Her connection with Ben, the bond between them that wouldn't break no matter how far apart they were. What did it mean? How could it have happened? If Snoke wasn't the one to bring it about, then how had it truly been forged? Questions like these ran through her head, spinning in circles that Rey couldn't trace even if she tried.

One last solitary tear rolled down her cheek, warm and gentle like the touch of Ben's fingers when he'd cupped her face the first time they'd seen each other in over a year. As long as Ben was with her, Rey knew that she could and would face whatever the vast unknown of space threw into their paths. Their journeys were intertwined, one parallel with the other, nearly touching now. Or had they already touched, having crossed? Rey couldn't deny the soothing feel of destiny in her bones. But there was something else. Something far beyond any link that the Force could tie them to. Something they'd have plenty of time to figure out over the next five years.


	3. Chapter 3: The Force

_**Chapter Three: The Force**_

Rey sat in the lounge room, arms folded over her chest, silence surrounding her. She could barely hear herself breathe. She'd taken a shower, put on comfortable clothes, left her hair down even, something she didn't usually do. But it didn't matter. Nothing felt right. Nothing felt like _anything_ right now. Even the thoughts in her head had fallen from shouts to whispers, murmurs she could hardly hear. Rey wished more than anything that one of them, _any_ of them would speak up, give her some answers to the thousands of questions going through her mind.

Ben walked in to see Rey staring at the floor as though it held unfathomable secrets. He knew all too well the kind of pain she was experiencing, the pain of having to be apart from those you loved most in the galaxy for so long. An agony like no other. The worst part was, Ben could only feel it with her. He wished he could do more, take away her pain, hold it all for her. But he'd learned long ago that hearts did not relinquish their hold on darkness so easily. And sometimes, all one had to do was be there. Only then would she begin to open up.

As soon as he sat down beside her, it was as if Rey had been pulled out of a trance, and she unconsciously breathed a sigh of relief. Whenever he was next to her, she felt a great weight being lifted from her soul. Whenever they were kept apart for too long, she felt like she was being crushed by that inexplicably heavy, invisible weight. Even when he was only in the next room from her, the faintest sense of impending suffocation would begin to settle around her lungs. Rey didn't think too hard about it, because the more she did, the harder it was to understand the depth of their connection. So more often than not, Rey just went with it.

Ben cleared his throat and Rey could practically feel his thoughts sifting wildly through the silence for something, _anything_ , to break the tension. Once or twice they both started to speak at once, immediately abandoning the endeavor afterwards. Finally, Rey said, "You go first."

"Really?" said Ben, looking at her. "Are you sure you…"

"Just kriffing say what you need to say, Ben," Rey snapped, not meaning it to sound as sharp as it did. She was more exhausted than she'd been in years, holding onto a fringed rope of exertion that was quickly dwindling.

"Ok," Ben continued. "Well, first of all, I think we should both agree, right here and now, to not keep anything important from each other. I think if we can manage that we should be able to make it through at least five years without killing each other." Although Ben's remark was meant to be humorous, all it did was make Rey flinch, as she fought back the endless barrage of memories of dark deeds and near-fatal mistakes. Ben sensed this, immediately swallowing the laugh that had been waiting to be released from his chest, and looked down at his hands. He cleared his throat again, desperate to fix whatever wound he had clumsily prodded.

"Sorry," he said.

"No, it's alright Ben," said Rey, trying to steady the tremble in her voice. "I'm just being silly."

"No, you're not," said Ben, turning to face her. "Rey, look at me." Rey turned her face up, her eyes connecting instantaneously with his. "I will never let the things I've done in the past hurt you."

"I know that, Ben," said Rey, her throat beginning to seize up, "but I don't think you fully understand…"

"Understand what?"

"That the things you've done _have_ hurt me. And many others. It's the reason why we're out here in the first place, the reason we've been exiled. I still hold onto hope for you, Ben. And now that you've turned, I wonder if it's really what you want."

"What do you mean, if it's what I want?" said Ben, his voice taking on the strain of exasperation.

"I mean, when we saw each others' future that night on Ach-to, we both thought that the other would turn to our side. We didn't consider that maybe it's not about _sides_ at all. What if it doesn't have to be about dark versus light anymore? What if it can just be _us_. You and I. _Together_ , just as we were always meant to be. The Force brought us together for a reason, I know you believe that just as strongly as I do. But it wasn't so that we could take sides against a common enemy. It was to bring balance. The only way that balance can thrive in the Force is if neither of us denies the light or the dark within us. Everyone has both. And it's what we do with them that makes us who we are."

"So you're saying that I may not even have a place in the light." Ben's eyes were beginning to cloud over with tears. Rey took his hand firmly, squeezing it reassuringly, never once looking away from his face.

"I'm saying that maybe neither of us belong entirely in the light. Or the darkness. So there has to be a middle ground. There has to be a place where we can stand together and see both sides of the Force equally."

"And once we find that, there won't be any more conflict?"

"No. Conflict can never go away, because there will always be those who dwell mostly within the dark, just as there are those who prefer to stay in the light. But the only way for us to help them to stop fighting is by finding the thing that bridges them."

"The Force," said Ben, the cloud moving away from his eyes as he finally understood.

"The Force," said Rey, nodding. A smile crept across her lips, parting her lips and causing her face to glow with an almost ethereal light. The cold that was in Ben's heart evaporated as he took her other hand. They stayed that way, looking at each other's faces for a full minute. Without thinking, Rey let her eyes roam over his face, taking in the sight of his relaxed features, how perfect they were. Rey could see everything he was feeling at that moment, just by observing the casual movements of his lips, the way they parted and closed at random intervals, impulsive like his mind, soft like his soul. Inaccessible like his heart. Rey couldn't understand why he still seemed to be so far beyond her reach. They both had secrets they wished they would never have to tell anyone. But in order for this arrangement to work, that had to change.

They didn't realize it, but their faces had drifted gradually closer to each other, no more than a few inches apart when Chewy's gruff voice made them both jump three feet away from each other. There was no telling just how long he'd been standing there, his arms folded like he actually was their father and they were being naughty children, up to some form of mischief that he didn't approve of. But whether he'd been there the whole time or only a second, Rey's and Ben's faces both glowed unattractively bright shades of red.

At last, Chewbacca cut the vein of awkwardness that had wound itself tight about the entire room, informing them that they would be reaching Laris in about five hours. Then, with one final snort, either a sign of amusement or annoyance, he stomped back to the cockpit, leaving Ben and Rey alone again.

Finally, Rey got up to leave, her hand slipping reluctantly from Ben's tender grasp. "I should probably try to get some rest," she said.

Before she left the room, she turned to look at him. "I agree with what you said, by the way."

"Which part?" he asked.

"The part where you said we shouldn't keep secrets from each other. You're right; we should at least try not to lie to each other while we're on our little vacation. I think it'll do us a lot of good, don't you?"

"Yeah," Ben replied with a faint smile. Rey smiled back.

"Well...see you in four hours, Ben."

"You too."


	4. Chapter 4: Laris

_**Chapter Four: Laris**_

Rey had never tried so hard to sleep in her life. No matter how often she avoided thinking of him, her mind always snuck back around to the way Ben had looked at her. And not just a moment ago in the lounge, but from the first moment she'd seen his face. There was always something that changed in his eyes, like a drop of color being added to a glass of water, filling them with something nameless that simply didn't exist when he looked at anyone else.

 _What is wrong with me?_ Rey asked the darkness of her room. The silence of being alone seemed to stretch on forever, a voiceless echo rolling forever down an endless tunnel in her head. She tried to think of something, _anything_ else. Like what they'd do first when they got to Laris. _Unpack, obviously_ , she thought, feeling stupid already. Could she truly find _nothing_ else to occupy her spare time? They'd brought so many things with them: books, clothes, food, holoshows, music, hunting gear (which Chewie had generously lent to them), even a few games to help them pass the time. And besides all that, they had a laundry list of mysteries to solve together about the nature of their connection. There was no shortage of things for them to do. How in the world would they survive through one year, let alone five?

 _What's wrong with me?_ Rey asked again, rolling onto her side. The slight creak in the bed ricocheted off the walls of the tiny room, nauseating her to no end. Finally, only two hours before they would arrive, the static of Rey's hopelessly entangled thoughts managed to lull her into a dreamless sleep, one which she hoped would be over soon.

As Rey slipped from consciousness, she wondered what the future would bring to her and Ben.

"Rey." Ben's voice roused her from her decidedly restless nap, and she opened her eyes to see his looking at her. Ben was crouching by the low bed so that they were at eye level, his soft breath caressing her face, forcing her to smile.

"What is it, Ben," Rey asked groggily.

"We're here. We should be landing in about a half an hour, so we should get our things ready."

"Alright," said Rey, sitting up slowly. Her eyes adjusted to the fluorescent light flooding in from the open doorway behind Ben, finally noticing what he was wearing: nothing particularly spectacular, a sight that was as abnormal for him as it was somewhat refreshing for her to see. Although, upon looking closer at his face, she could see that he'd gotten just as much sleep as she had, he still seemed much more relaxed than he'd been five hours ago. It was nice to see him loosening up a bit on the surface, even if she could still sense tension within him. "I'll be with you in a minute."

"You sure you're alright?" he asked, himself knowing what her answer would be.

"Yes, I'm fine. But I'll probably need at least five more hours of sleep once we get to the bunker. And from the looks of it, you'll probably need it too."

Ben smiled as he backed out of the room. He still wore his usual black leather trousers, and Rey found herself liking the way they accentuated his muscles in spite of herself. She blushed, even though no one was looking. This was going to be a tough five years.

Even though he'd already done it, Ben went back to his room and splashed his face with lukewarm water. When he looked up at his face in the mirror, he wondered how a girl as kind and as beautiful as Rey could stand to be near a monster like him for even a few minutes, let alone five years. He decided not to think on it too much, it would only give him a bigger headache than he already had. He needed to stay sharp for the transition into their new life.

With one last glance at the cracked reflection, Ben took a deep breath and began to move his luggage to the Falcon's entryway.

Thirty minutes later, and after what seemed like forever, the Falcon touched solid ground. At last, they'd arrived at their new home. Laris.

Rey could already smell the forest that surrounded them as far as the eye could see, feel the ancient strength of the mountains scattered across the planet's surface. Together, she and Chewie brought the Falcon to a resounding halt in a natural landing field that clearly hadn't been tended to in at least a decade. Rey breathed a sigh of relief and resolution, getting up to open the door and take her first steps on Laris' surface.

Rey exited the Falcon with Ben close behind her, savoring each step she took from the Falcon's gangplank. The sun perched at an angle, and the sky was a gradually darkening shade of blue. As Laris slipped into it's evening mode, Rey could sense all the creatures that thrived in the night hours beginning to come out of hiding to go about their usual business. Well now they'd have to get used to two new neighbors, she thought to herself.

The air was so crystal clear, Rey thought she might faint from the steady stream of lush fragrances whirling around her head. She didn't know she'd been standing at the base of the plank sniffing the air the whole time until Ben put his hand on her shoulder, coaxing her out of her momentary trance.

"Still ok?" he asked reassuringly.

Rey nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. I just...can't quite believe we're here. If that makes any sense."

"It does," he replied, "I can't fathom why we got landed in this dump either." Rey smiled, secretly proud of the quick-witted sense of humor he'd recently acquired. He didn't mean it, of course. Rey had never seen such a beautiful planet before in her life besides Takodana where Han had taken her and Finn to see Maz Kanata when they'd first met. It was just as green, just as fresh, but it also had a quality of mystery that tickled Rey's senses in a new way. Life bloomed, died, and was reborn here just as it did on every other planet in the galaxy. But here, everything seemed to happen in near-perfect harmony. Here, the balance of the Force ebbed like the waves of a vast ocean. Ben could feel it too, taking a moment to stand still beside Rey, as the energy of the planet surrounded them, explored them, became accustomed to them, welcomed them.

Chewie finally came down behind them, allowing them a few more seconds of stillness before reminding them with a gentle growl that it was time to start the move.

Rey and Ben looked at each other briefly, catching a familiar gleam in each other's eyes that meant that something special had clicked into place.


	5. Chapter 5: Alone and Together

_**Chapter Five: Alone and Together**_

The majority of their luggage required all three of them to carry it into the bunker together, though Chewbacca felt obliged to do most of the heavy lifting himself, despite several protestations by both Rey and Ben, neither of them wanting to feel in the least bit useless at this point. As soon as the heaviest things were settled, they brought the light carry-on baggage out of the Falcon and set it down on the ground several feet away.

Though the move-in was complete, Rey felt more dragged down than ever when the time came to say goodbye. She missed all of her friends already, more than words could say. But Chewbacca was someone special, the closest thing she had to actual family. She didn't even try to restrain the tears as she walked slowly up to her guardian and let him fold her into the warmest embrace. Her arms grew weary after a few moments of trying to hug him tighter than he was hugging her.

Chewy held her at arms length, his paws resting on her shoulders, his head bobbing from side to side as it usually did when he was thinking about something. He looked down at the girl he'd come to care for so dearly, wondering if this was what it felt like for human parents to have to let their children go when they grew up. He could feel her whole body trembling from the effort of keeping herself from crumbling to the ground at his feet. He touched a furry finger to her face, wiping a solitary tear from her cheek. Then he snuffled something to her that gave her the strength not to faint from the unfathomable emptiness that was gouging itself into her chest.

"I'll see you soon," she said between sharp gasps of air.

With a forlorn farewell grumble, Chewbacca turned and boarded the Falcon. The moment he took his paws off her shoulders, she thought the air itself might crush her where she stood. Thankfully, Ben Solo was at her side just as quickly, and it was enough to keep her from falling apart.

Once the Falcon had blasted fully out of sight, Rey surprised herself by feeling stronger rather than weaker. Instead of blacking out then and there, her whole body became rigid for a moment, and she turned sharply towards the bunker, brushing past Ben's concerned form as she headed in the direction of her new home.

The bunker, as Leia had called it, was an old POW cell from the days of the Rebellion, and although it hadn't been occupied in years, it was still suitable for living in. It had been used to house mainly higher up prisoners, those rarely caught, high-end Imperial officials whom the Rebellion had somehow managed to snare. They needed a place to put them that wasn't infested with rats, so they built a small facility that was equipped with anything that might keep an Imperial officer out of boredom, namely holo-soap operas and cheesy books, fancy, fat-filled foods, and all the liquor that they could stuff in their boudoir.

Rey liked that it smelled nice, despite (and possibly because of) the air freshener having been completely busted long ago. It was somewhat dismal, but she was confident that they'd find a way to make it feel more homely over the next five years.

Rey walked through the open doorway, standing on the threshold for several still moments, breathing in the scent of fresh leaves that had eked in through the cracks in the walls over the years. The room was dark; Rey didn't feel like turning on the lights right now. All she wanted to do was lay down in her own bed and sleep through all five years of their exile.

In a moment, Ben Solo had come up behind her again, unintentionally looming over her. Rey knew he couldn't help his size, but sometimes she wished he would shrink at least a foot or two. Then maybe he'd be less intimidating.

Without thinking, Rey immediately began to take off her clothes and throw them on the floor. She didn't care that Ben was still looking at her, most likely feeling as uncomfortable as she would feel if she were twice as conscious of her own existence as she was at this moment. She let her hair tumble down over her bare shoulders, never once looking back at Ben as she went to her room and closed the door. Nothing mattered now. They were stuck together on this breathtakingly beautiful planet for five bloody years with nothing but each other to pass the time. She had nothing to hide from him, not even her own body. Besides, she'd seen him plenty of times when he didn't want her to. The Force had often connected them at inconvenient times, even before he turned his back on the First Order. They'd be able to see each other, just as they had when she was on Ahch-To.

Rey could feel the entire forest that surrounded them from her tiny room. It breathed, in and out, spilling over into the atmosphere, and even into the space beyond the planet. It beat like a heart, pulsing with life, with endless death and rebirth. She could feel the seeds that fell from the highest trees to the ground growing beyond their shells beneath the soil, taking root, breaking the surface, reaching into the air, until they were as tall as the trees that gave birth to them. It was the most amazing sensation Rey had ever felt, even more so than when she had closed her eyes and felt the island on Ahch-To all those days ago. Rivers and creeks, lakes and ponds, grass, flowers, weeds, animals, they all lived in harmony here. Maybe Rey and Ben could learn to do the same in time.

Ben stood in the open doorway, a cool breeze blowing against his back. He couldn't feel it. His mind was preoccupied by what he'd just seen. Rey had taken off almost all her clothes, save for her bra and her pants, leaving them strewn about the living room like fallen leaves. Without thinking, Ben picked them all up, wishing he could feel their soft texture through his thick gloves. Once they were all off the floor, he stood in the middle of the room for a moment, staring at the door to her room. Then he brought her clothes slowly to his face, inhaling her sweet smell that lingered on them like an atmosphere of Rey. He immediately felt ashamed of his childish curiosity. He had done things that made him feel like a monster. But this made him feel inhuman. Unclean. And most importantly, unworthy. Unworthy of what? He asked himself. Unworthy of her. He attempted to discard the feeling of pleasure that her scent gave him, but to no avail.

He went to her door and tentatively knocked. When there was no answer, he cleared his throat. "Rey?" he said as softly as possible. Before he could press his ear to the door, try to feel whatever it was she was feeling, the doors slid open, and the numbness that radiated from her seeped through his clothes and penetrated his skin. He had no wish to disturb her. He could tell that she was trying to meditate. He stood in the doorway, looking at her as he had before, that strange sensation pulsing throughout his body.

Her back was to him. She still wore her bra and trousers, but she felt more naked somehow. More exposed. More vulnerable. Smaller.

She sat on the edge of her bed, her head tilted back, face bathing in the fading sunlight that spilled through her open window. Ben could feel the warmth she felt on his face, and he held on to it for dear life.

Finding himself again, he crossed the floor and laid her clothes gently on the bed. Rey turned her head halfway, not looking at him directly, but acknowledging him fully. Ben stood up straight again, feeling too tall in the small room. Rey's arms were wrapped tightly around her legs, as though they were the only thing she had left to hang on to. Ben saw that tears had been streaking her face, one of them catching a glint of sunlight as it fell from her eye, shining like a star that had chosen to live on her cheek.

Ben's heart rate and breathing had slowed, until he nearly forgot about them entirely. She was looking right at him now, her back twisting so that they could be eye to eye. Their connection clicked into place again, and the rest of the world slipped away. The only light that existed in the whole universe was right here, in this room, and they were generating it together.

Rey patted the empty spot beside her. "Sit with me awhile, Ben. Please." She didn't have to ask him twice. Within seconds he was by her side, and suddenly he didn't feel so much larger than her anymore. They were the same, both small, both vulnerable.

The bed was soft, but not as soft as the feeling of Rey's energy beside him. It coaxed his defenses open, and his breath and heart fell into sync with hers.

They both sighed, equally relieved to have someone to talk to, someone to be with, although they'd never admit it to one another in a million years. They were outsiders, always apart from the collective chaos of the rest of the galaxy. They'd both known loneliness, tasted fire in anger, felt rain in calmness. They both knew what it was like to feel _everything_ and not know what to make of it all. The Force had connected them for reasons they couldn't begin to understand. Not yet, at least. But for now, they didn't think about any of that. They just sat together, watching as the light of day faded from the world, and a thick blanket of night was pulled over the sky, studded with countless stars that seemed to sing together in harmonies of color and light. The light and the darkness conjoined, eternally hand-in-hand. No wars, no conflict could separate them. For theirs was a love that was stronger than all the hatred in the universe. A love that had stood the test of time for trillions of years, and would endure for trillions more. Unending. Unbreakable. And for the first time in what seemed like forever, whole again.

Their minds whispered together, even though no words ever left their lips. Rey wanted to be angry with him, wanted to hate him for everything he'd done. And Ben wanted to hate her for everything she'd done to him. But no spark of hatred could seem to catch on, as though any kindling of fury that there might have been within them had been dampened by the greater longing for peace.

Rey couldn't remember anything that happened after that, but somehow they'd managed to separate, Ben getting up and leaving her room to sleep in his own, Rey curling up in the middle of her bed, not even bothering to get under the covers, and eventually falling into a deep and untroubled sleep.


	6. Chapter 6: The First Day

_**Chapter Six: The First Day**_

If Rey had any dreams that night, she'd either forgotten them as soon as she opened her eyes or they were subconscious. She didn't care, because the moment she woke up, she felt more refreshed and alive than she'd been for months.

She breathed slowly, in and out, and the forest breathed with her. Rey smiled, remembering where they were. Laris. And just as quickly, the blissful feeling disappeared, as she reminded herself _why_ they were there.

Silence filled her head. She hated when this happened, because it felt like she was dying. Not that she knew precisely how it felt to die. But she had known in her lifetime, more times than she could remember, what it was like to be close to death. Whether it was near-starvation in the Jakku desert, or being tortured by Snoke on the Supremacy, Rey knew what it was to be brought to her furthest limits and push through still further. Rey held onto moments like those, memories of pain or extreme sickness, or even self-doubt, the most crushing of them all. Because though they had tried, they had not killed her. No, they had only made her stronger. And stronger she would be for as long as she could bear this exile.

"Good morning," said a deep, foggy voice off to the side. Rey turned her head, and saw Ben Solo standing in the doorway again. He wore a simple, long-sleeved black shirt, his usual black gloves, and still those same black leather pants. Rey forced her eyes to stay on his face, which was tired, but seemed to have gotten younger by a few years. His hair was still just as glossy and extravagant as ever, one of the few physical remnants of the mighty Kylo Ren in all his arrogant glory. Rey had no idea how he managed to keep it this way, but she liked it in spite of herself.

"Good morning," she said, rubbing her eyes and sitting up in bed. "Sleep well?"

"Not really," he replied in a monotone that was so pronounced, Rey couldn't help but smile. She realized for the first time that he was actually quite hilarious when he tried too hard to be serious. "You?"

"Actually, I slept fine, thank you," said Rey. She looked at him, tilting her head and cocking her eyebrow playfully. He didn't seem to be in the least bit amused.

Ben looked down at the floor, leaning one gloved hand against the door frame and resting the other on his slightly jutted hip. Rey could tell he was searching for the words to say something that was simpler than he thought. He finally came out with it, barely looking at her as he said, "What do we do about food?"

"Aren't there rations in the refrigerator?" Rey asked.

"There are," said Ben, "but I wouldn't exactly call it 'food'."

Rey laughed out loud, eliciting a confused expression on Ben's face that soon turned to embarrassment. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing. It's just that for fifteen years of my life I survived on tasteless portions scavenged from downed Imperial star destroyers on Jakku. All the scavengers who worked for Unkar Plutt brought whatever they'd found to him in exchange for something that made their bellies feel a little less empty than they were every day. It was all we had, unless we were skilled, or stupid enough, depending on the situation, to go out and actually kill one of the ferocious beasts that thrived in those harsh conditions. Most of us just opted for the portions because nine times out of ten, the creatures being hunted were more keen on eating us than they were on being eaten."

"You say 'we' and 'us' when you refer to these scavengers," mused Ben, "Did they seem somewhat like a family to you?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, I don't think any of us ever thought of it like that. But I suppose we were a community of sorts. We all knew each other, not as friends but as fellow scavengers all competing for the same thing: food. Very few of us ever got chummy with one another, because there was always the fear that one day our 'chum' might pull a knife or a blaster on us and go after our hoard. It was never easy, not even for those of us who were there longer than fifteen years." Rey looked down at her fingers, suddenly self-conscious.

"Did you ever get chummy? When you were there, on Jakku?" asked Ben tentatively. It was clear he was trying not to hit a nerve that was too tender. But strangely enough, Rey felt absolutely comfortable telling him the story of her life.

"I did once," she replied, looking at the floor, uncovering a memory long buried beneath her thick skin. "It wasn't that long before I left the planet for good. Maybe a year or so. I'd found this ship crashed out in the desert, an old Ghtroc 690 light freighter. It was damaged but still in one piece. I knew if I could fix it up, Unkar would pay handsomely for it, enough to keep me fed and hydrated for at least a week. I was already good at fixing things, so I knew I could do it. The trick was keeping it a secret long enough. I'd used a memetic sheet to hide it, and for a while it worked. But then I met Devi and Strunk, sister and brother; they'd noticed that I wasn't hanging around Niima Outpost as often as I used to, and before long they sussed out that I was up to something. Soon they found it, my freighter, with me in it. The sheets had petered out the same day that I met them, and I knew they'd find me eventually. And they did, one day when I was busy fixing the navicomputer relays in the cockpit. They congratulated me on my find and offered to help me fix it. I knew the work would be done ten times quicker with all three of us, and they weren't nearly as horrible as the scavengers I was used to. I guess their being so young and seemingly innocent took my guard down. I let them help me, and for a while it was fine. I still didn't trust them, but they'd proved their worth to me as we made progress on the ship. They even helped me defend the ship against a group of Teedos trying to steal it one night."

"Teedos?" said Ben, interrupting Rey's train of thought.

"Jakku locals, group scavengers. Not very friendly, at least not to me. I guess I was so good at my job that I had become a threat to them. But at the same time they respected me as someone who knew how to defend myself and get whatever I needed if I could afford it." Rey smiled faintly, even though she couldn't have been further from happiness in this moment. "Anyway, after that night we didn't have any other problems. We'd succeeded in fixing the Ghtroc, and I flew it into Niima with all of us in it. I left them in charge of it while I went to negotiate with Unkar about the price. While my back was turned, the little bastards hopped aboard my ship and flew away, never to be seen again. And with them, my hopes for a week without an empty belly or a dry throat.

You know, the worst part of it was, I knew exactly why they did it. We all did. There wasn't a scrounger on that godforsaken ball of dust who wouldn't have jumped somebody else's ship just to get out if they knew what they were doing and where they were going. Nobody but me, that is."

"Because you wouldn't do something like that," Ben interjected, and Rey looked at him again, noticing that his stance had shifted to one that was more relaxed and casual. He'd been settling into her story, wrapping her words around him like a blanket. "You're too good."

"No," said Rey, almost to herself as she observed her fingers once more. "I never did anything like that because I was waiting for my parents." A lump had begun to grow in her throat, and she tried to swallow it down. Her jaw had tightened and her voice trembled like a building in an earthquake. The room was swimming in the tears that now glossed over her eyes, and Rey fought to keep herself from crying again. Now was not the time.

Ben Solo didn't rush to her side, even though she was visibly struggling to hold herself together. He knew she needed space to work things out on her own. That didn't mean he didn't want to go to her, more than anything in that moment. Instead he stood rigid in the door frame, his eyes locked on her small but powerful body, watching her tough yet tender skin rise and fall with every heave that threatened to release another torrent of despair.

Rey sniffed, wiping the wetness from her eyes, and turned to look at Ben once more. "We'll have rations for breakfast today, and then we'll figure out something else for lunch," she said confidently.

"And what do you propose to that end?" asked Ben.

"Well," said Rey, standing up, placing her hands on her hips, "we really shouldn't let Chewy's hunting gear go to waste now, should we?"

"I can't hunt," Ben said, flatly.

"Neither can I. But that's never stopped me before, and I don't suspect it'll stop you either." Rey smiled, her face glowing with the light of the morning that had begun to peak through her window.

Ben grinned knowingly back. Then all at once, his face went beet red as it became apparent that Rey still wasn't wearing a shirt, and that only loose pants covered her lower half. Rey noticed at the same time, her shin turning a similar shade as goosebumps began to spring up along her shoulders and arms.

"I'll, um, see you soon," said Rey, the awkwardness that had settled over the room crushing her statement into a grain of sand. Ben straightened up and nodded once before beating a hasty retreat.

Rey couldn't decide if she felt excited or mortified. Whatever it was that she felt, Rey had very little experience in it.

Rey showered and dressed, leaving her hair undone again. She was beginning to like the small feeling of looseness and freedom it gave her just to feel it being picked up by a breeze that wafted through her window.

Coming out of her room, she immediately set off for the kitchen to finally get something to eat. Her stomach had been complaining all through her shower and she hoped to silence it as soon as possible.

Ben sat at the long metal table, playing with his soggy meat-veg portion as though he didn't actually know what it was and was keen on finding that out. Rey smiled again, grabbing herself two portions from the refrigerator stock and heating them up on what must have been the fanciest stove she'd ever seen in her life. There wasn't a spot of grease on the thing, which would soon be put right by Rey's clumsy cooking abilities.

As soon as her meal was ready, she sat down next to Ben, and they both ate (or tried to eat) in silence. This time the silence wasn't awkward but, oddly comfortable in its own way. As though they'd done this before, this business of waking up and eating breakfast together, almost like they were…

Rey finished chewing her food, then cleared her throat. "So, I was hoping we might explore the surrounding forest when we're done here," she said brightly.

"You do realize that this entire planet is one big forest," replied Ben, his Solo snark kicking into high gear. Rey brushed it off.

"Just to get a feel for our surroundings, our environment, you know. What we're dealing with here."

"I get the picture," said Ben.

"Finally, some sign of hope," Rey retorted. "Do you want to give me the last half of yours?" she asked, eying his mostly-uneaten breakfast. Ben slid his plate over to her without a fuss, and Rey took it and finished it eagerly.

Ben knew better than to comment on her eating habits, so he kept his smug mouth shut as she devoured the tasteless rations and cleaned both plates off.

As soon as she finished eating, Rey stood up, licking the savory grease from her fingers. She looked down at Ben with a smile. "Well, come on then, Solo. We've got a lot of exploring to do."

Putting on a light jacket and throwing her quarterstaff over her shoulder, Rey marched out the door and into the sweetest morning light she'd ever seen. Ben was close behind, and shielded his eyes from the glare.

Rey stopped in the middle of the clearing, inhaling the breath of the forest, the whispers of the trees above her head and the grass beneath her feet, secrets hidden within every leaf that trickled down to the ground, just waiting to be uncovered. With one last sigh, Rey walked forward, stopping for a moment before entering into the wild, entangled undergrowth.

The second she set foot beneath the canopy, she felt as though her very soul now belonged to the woods. She sensed neither complete darkness nor total light, but a vibrant, flowing entanglement of both. Every branch seemed to reach out to her, welcoming her as a child, long lost, is welcomed home again. Rey had never been to or seen this planet, and yet her heart had already built its home here. The roots beneath the soil grounded her every step, and looking behind her, she found that she could see exactly where she had come from. Looking ahead, she knew exactly where she was going. A silent laugh escaped her chest.

"Keep up, Ben. I don't know where we're going but we'll be there soon."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean?" he managed to ask between gasps of air.

"No idea," said Rey, more to herself than to him.

Ben was just as taken aback at the thickness of life singing all around him. The Force pulsed like a heartbeat here, breathing in and out its mysteries. What he found strangest about this place was that the trees all seemed to have identities of their own. As he passed them, they seemed to observe him from above, seeing into his soul, his past, who he was, who he is now. And though they knew him better than he knew himself, none of them passed judgement on him. It was as if he was being born anew, a fresh start to life hidden somewhere in the greenery that surrounded them. He had no choice but to let them listen to his heart. They heard every ache, every piece that was missing, every drop of light he stole, every ounce of darkness he coveted. They knew every life he'd erased with his own hands, when he called himself Kylo Ren.

But they did not shun him for it, did not condemn him to an endless hell of misery for every scar he'd etched into the face of the galaxy. In these woods, he was Ben Solo, _only_ Ben Solo. Like he was when he was a child, wrapped up in dreams and nightmares, fears and hopes. Embraced by the love of his mother, the strong spirit of his grandfather and grandmother, the tender eyes of his great-grandmother. Every deed that made him a monster in the eyes of the rest of the galaxy was lost in these woods, discarded and absorbed by the wet earth beneath his feet. Nothing else mattered but the fact that he was _here_. And for once, he understood what that meant.

Rey spotted a place a few feet up ahead where the mass of trees broke. A pile of large rocks were grouped together in the clearing like a child's collection of pebbles. Rey moved swiftly until she stood at the base of the pile. It was less of a pile and more of an assortment, some rocks leaning on each other, others balancing on their own as if some invisible hand were holding them steady. The rocks seemed to be collectively reaching upward to the small patch of sky that had been cleared for the space. Rey wondered if, at some point during the day, the sun was ever just above this spot so that it shone, unobstructed, onto the rocks. There was no way to be sure so early, but Rey had a feeling that it did. And though it wasn't made by any intelligent hands, somehow it was designed just for this purpose.

"Come on, Ben," she called back through the foliage, where Ben was busy ambling over roots and bushes, trying not to trip on everything. The air was still fresh and clean, each light breeze like a warm silken blanket pulled over his head. Though his breaths were shallow, they were not strained or congested. This was probably the purest environment he'd ever been in, having spent most of his life in the stark, lifeless world of powerful ships moving endlessly through space, with no consideration at all for the living things that existed on the planets they tried to conquer or destroy. Ben realized in that moment just how blinded he'd been, how short-sighted they all were.

"You're not making this any easier on me, are you, scavenger girl?" he huffed as he stumbled into the tiny open space.

"I'm just as exhausted as you, pal," said Rey, exhilarated by the fresh energy that the exercise had given her.

"Why do I find that so hard to believe?" Ben muttered under his breath. Rey heard it and smiled even wider.

"Come on, help me climb this pile," said Rey, although by 'help' she clearly meant follow and watch my back in case I fall, because she needed no assistance in the actual climbing. From all those years spent crawling through the jagged wreckage of crashed ships on Jakku, this was nothing in comparison to her, and she hopped up like an Alderaanian mountain goat until she crouched down on the highest rock. Although Ben was right behind her the whole time, the task was substantially more difficult for him than it was for Rey, and she held out her hand to help him up the rest of the way. He took it without thinking, and a few more grunts of discomfort later, he stood at the top with her.

They were several feet above the forest floor now, and the air seemed much clearer, even at that low altitude. The sun's rays had just begun to spill over the treetops that framed the small patch of bright blue sky above them, making the leaves glow with an almost golden tint. The beginning of the changing of seasons? Rey wondered.

"Rey, why are we here?" asked Ben. He was looking straight up at the sky, as though he wasn't precariously balanced on a rock, perched at least ten feet off the ground. Rey looked at him in confusion.

"What do you mean, Ben?"

"I mean, why are we here?" he repeated.

"On Laris?" she inquired, more puzzled than ever.

"No, _here_ , in this spot. In this place, right now. _Why_ are we here?"

Rey thought for a moment before answering. "I don't know. Why do you think, genius?"

Ben didn't even try to come back with something clever. He was far too absorbed in something Rey couldn't see. "Somehow," he said calmly, "I don't think it was just curiosity that led you to this place."

"What are you saying?"

"Listen, Rey. Do you hear anything anymore? Animals chirping, leaves brushing?"

Rey tuned her ears to the vibrations of the forest. They weren't there anymore. It was as if they'd stepped under a dome of silence. Even the air stood still, no breeze blew across their faces, no gossiping leaves whispered to them from above. Here, the only sound was that of their breathing, in and out, which a moment ago had been so silent, they'd forgotten entirely about it.

They both stood still, as if one move could shatter something fragile. Then suddenly, a low throbbing arose at the base of Rey's skull, crawling down her spine, expanding out to her fingertips and her toes. She felt as though her whole body had become a conduit for a streak of electricity passing from the sky to the ground. Or was it the trees that were generating the sensation? Whatever the cause, they both felt it, traveling through their bodies in slow motion as the rest of the world moved at the speed of light around them. They both knew the moment it started, it was the Force. A rare, pure, sensational manifestation of the Force, striking them both with streams of silver light.

Rey could feel herself losing control of her own body, and for a moment she thought that they might keel over and tumble all the way to the ground. But something much deeper inside her told her that if she simply let it all go, trusted in the strength of the Force, the Balance, they would be alright. And she did. They both did.

No sooner had they done this, than the feeling was gone, the vibration had dissipated back into the air, and all around them was still once again. Rey and Ben looked at each other without a trace of confusion. Instead of feeling stunned from the experience, the way one normally would when hit by a shock of electricity, they felt perfectly normal. Better than normal, in fact.

Without a single word, they both began to climb down slowly from the rocks, barely even breathing until they'd both touched the ground again. Then they looked at each other again, a new light glowing in their eyes, a light that had never been there before. For a moment it seemed as though they were both going to speak. But the moment their mouths opened, the words were swept off their tongues by a fresh breeze that brushed against them, blowing Rey's hair out of her face, reminding her of familiar sensations that now felt almost alien: the rush of breath in and out of her lungs, the crackle of the ground beneath her feet, and the cool wind against her skin. Rey savored each one as it came echoing back into her memory, as though she were learning how to be human all over again.

The same feelings rippled through Ben's system, a reawakening of the most ordinary of senses, ones he'd never stopped to contemplate before. Like the feeling of his skin on hers when their hands gravitated instinctively toward each other. And like an old friend, her fingers opened up to welcome his.

They noticed that the sun had indeed passed directly over the pile of rocks, and was now beginning its slow fall from the sky above their heads into the sky that spread over the other side of the planet. For the first time, neither of them felt like doing anything anymore. Not crying, not laughing, not even talking.

Instead, hand-in-hand like it was the most natural thing in the universe, they walked back through the forest, knowing exactly where they were going even though their footprints were nowhere to be found amongst the leaves and twigs that littered the ground. Something else was guiding their way. And somehow Rey knew that it was the same thing that bound them to each other. The same force now led them, like a string tied to their waists, all the way back to the bunker.

The forest was alive around them once again, the whispering sounds of leaves and tiny animals rustling in the bushes echoing through the woods. Neither Ben nor Rey felt like going back into the lifeless bunker just yet. The sun was still up, still high in the sky. So instead they sat down next to each other in the field of tall grass that surrounded their house like a waving moat. Everything swayed in unison as the wind swept over them, and even Rey and Ben fell into their own synchronized rhythm, side to side, in micro movements. Becoming one with the grass.

It was funny to think about, but it was true. Rey felt more in tuned with their surroundings than ever. She was apart of it, it was a part of her. A sensation that had taken root in both of them, and was now harmonizing with their systems.

Rey hugged her legs gently, Ben sat cross-legged and hunched over a small tuft of grass as though it were the single most fascinating thing in the whole galaxy. Rey watched as tiny puff clouds danced across the open sky, some kissing the tops of the mountains, some floating miles above them. She watched as their shapes changed, little by little, always in motion, constantly flowing shapelessly like the Force itself.

She sighed and laid back on the ground. The grass parted for her, enveloping her in its cool, stringy arms. She laced her fingers and rested her hands on her belly, feeling it rise and fall with every inhale of Laris air that entered and left her body, filling and emptying her all at once.

Rey turned her head so that she was looking at Ben. She could barely see his face, but what little she could see of it told her that he was deep in thought. Deeper than she'd ever seen him before. She wanted so badly to bridge the gap that still existed between them, not just physically but mentally. It seemed as though they were on the same level, the same plane, but separated from each other by a deep chasm that refused to close, but got closer and closer the longer they were together. When they were apart, the gap widened.

She lifted her hand to pick a strand of black hair off his sleeve, and in doing so seemed to bring him out of his abysmal reverie.

He looked over and down at her. His face was relaxed, and yet it contained a million expressions at once. Rey sat up again, this time much closer to him than before. Tucking wayward strands of hair behind her ear, she leaned back and looked at him thoughtfully. This time he wasn't looking down but straight ahead, his eyes reaching deep into the woods beyond the clearing. Rey sensed that something was on his mind, something that needed to be said before it dissipated back into the aether of his subconscious.

Rey absentmindedly played with one of Ben's raven-shaded, lightly curling locks. His entire face had become stern now, as though an unseen weight was pressing down on his head. His neck was tense, his eyebrows drawn tight as a knot, and even Rey noticed the subtle shaking of his hands as they hung loose over his knees. She knew he was seriously struggling not to lose it at that moment. And although Rey hadn't the faintest idea why, she understood every ache in his chest, every twinge of strain behind his eyes as though they were her own. As though the simple act of touching him ignited a secret hunger within her that she never knew she had. A hunger for his darkness, his suffering. And a thirst for the light which she knew still burned within him.

"Maybe you should tell me what's been on your mind lately," she ventured. The wind shifted ever so slightly, and with it, Ben Solo's focus. Instead of drilling black holes into the tree line that stared serenely back at him, his eyes now settled on Rey's face, so gentle and painless, a cooling force that instantly tempered his unspoken rage.

Rey's hand abandoned Ben's hair to rest soundly on his shoulder. She felt his labored breathing beginning to slow down, inhaling and exhaling much steadier this time. Her eyes never left his face, studying every inch of it, memorizing every micromovement, every shift in the balance between the light that shone on it and the shadows it cast. "You know you can tell me anything, Ben." He seemed to breathe a sigh of relief at her words, allowing her voice to sweep over him like the most elegant noctilucent cloud.

"All my life," he began, "I've been asking myself the same questions: who am I? Where do I belong? The same questions, over and over again. And every time I asked, I never got an answer. There were times when I thought I'd found my place, understood who I was. But they were only ever delusions, the hopes of a foolish little boy caught up in a conflict he didn't understand."

Rey listened to his words intently, barely breathing or moving a muscle, lest she inadvertently interrupt his stream of thoughts.

"But then," said Ben, "I met you. And all at once, the fantasy of power and fulfillment, the dream I'd held onto for so long, that I'd convinced myself to be true, everything came crashing down around me. I'd spent the better half of my nights seeing visions of a nameless, faceless girl, one who would bring the destruction of who I thought I was, and all that I thought I had. And when I saw you, it was all gone in an instant. And as I struggled to gather the broken pieces, the image of you would come back with fury, pushing through my mental defenses, cutting out my greatest fears and holding them up to the light where they could be seen for what they truly were, calling the Skywalker lightsaber to your hand in the forest. Your eyes. Your face. Everything about you. You tortured me for nights on end after you left me to die on Starkiller Base, without ever having to lift a finger. As I closed my eyes in one part of the galaxy, you would open them light years away, stunning any dreams I might have had, lulling me to sleep and then jolting me awake again. Crushing me from the inside out.

But as time went by, I realized that it wasn't _me_ you were crushing, all those dreamless nights that I couldn't stop thinking about you. You were crushing Kylo Ren, killing it, laying it to rest like a worn-out piece of clothing that no longer fit, as you lifted me back up to the light again. And for the first time in so many years, I could _feel_ again."

Ben turned so that he was directly facing Rey, taking her hands in his, holding them warmly, comfortingly. Rey let him, just as she let him be who he was always meant to be.

"Rey, I didn't know who I was, or where I belonged. I may not even know that for certain now. I may never find out. But it doesn't matter, because all I know is that those rocks we found in the forest showed me something. Something I never could have glimpsed in my wildest dreams."

"I saw something too," said Rey. Her eyes were filling up with tears, and so were his. "And I think this time, we might have the same idea."

Neither of them could pinpoint the strange sensations coursing through their bodies in this moment, but they both knew that they had established their first truth, the first true realization of their bond. It was gradually becoming conscious now, something that not only moved them, but was moved by them as well.

Once more, their eyes connected and everything slid into place. As though every time they looked at each other, things just started making sense. Not everything, but some things. Things that had been on their minds for months, that had been nagging them to follow some unseen path of destiny that would ultimately lead to the same place: each other. And as the threads of their thoughts began to disentangle themselves, new pockets of emotion swelled all throughout their systems, bursting and filling up again with new energies that had no identity, but overflowed with meaning for both of them.

The sun had begun to settle over the snow-capped peaks of the west, making them sparkle in the dim evening light, before Rey and Ben realized that they'd been sitting in that field for well over an hour. They both stood, sturdy laughs of embarrassment dying out in their chests, and walked back toward the bunker as the shadows on the ground grew taller, reaching out in the wake of their footsteps as they left the outside world for yet another night.

After a stale dinner of protein rations, they both agreed that they had to go back to the rocks at some point, sooner rather than later. Maybe not the next day, or the day after that. But soon enough. For that small space in the vast wilderness of Laris held secrets, knowledge that had somehow touched them on a physical as well as mental level, and they both had a strong sense that the Force held sway there. Of its own accord, or by that of some ancient Force-wielder, long forgotten, neither could say. But the most powerful energies that the Force could produce had gathered around that pile of rocks. And both Rey and Ben meant to find out why. And, moreover, how it had affected them.


	7. Chapter 7: Deeper

_**Chapter Seven: Deeper**_

The next day dawned much like the first. Ration breakfast, and the shocking realization that they had nothing to drink. There was a tap in the kitchen, but it was used primarily for washing dishes, and the water that came out of it was too warm and too soapy for either of their tastes. So they set a new goal: find water that either or both of them could drink without immediately spitting it out all over the place. Rey had seen plenty of gut-wrenching sights in her lifetime, but one thing she never wanted to witness again was Ben practically throwing up the water that Rey had given him right after he'd downed the whole glass. It could have been worse, Rey supposed, shoving the image of Ben coughing up blood or some other substance after taking a sip of infected or poisoned water out of her head with a shudder.

"I'm sure we'll find fresh water somewhere," Rey said after the mess of splattered water and spittle droplets had been wiped off the table top. "This area must be covered in reservoirs. Rivers, ponds, maybe even lakes. We'll find something."

"And then we'll have to think up a system that doesn't involve hauling buckets of mountain water back and forth between said bodies of water and the bunker every single day."

Rey knew he was only being funny, but sometimes he could be a real prick about the littlest things. She stamped her foot in an almost childish manner that surprised both of them, which was probably a warning to Ben from the more petulant side of Rey's personality that if he came too close to seriously ticking her off, she would not be responsible for her actions.

"Anyways," Rey continued, seemingly unperturbed by Ben's peevish cheek, "We should get a move on so we can figure all this out on the way." She had already grabbed her satchel, quarterstaff, and jacket, and was headed out the door before Ben could gather up his wits and trudge after her.

They'd gotten up an hour earlier than the previous morning, so the sun didn't glare so brilliantly as they emerged from the comparative darkness of the bunker in to the crisp early morning air. The sun had already risen above the mountains, but had yet to climb over the treeline that now obscured their view of the western peaks as they stepped up once more to the edge of the forest.

"Which way do you think we should go?" asked Ben.

"Well, seeing as how I took the lead yesterday, I think it should be your turn to lead the party today," said Rey, amused by how awkward he seemed in this environment.

"Oh. But I don't know the way."

"And exactly how many times do you think I've had occasion to visit Laris prior to our coming here?" said Rey, hands on hips again. Ben grimaced: she had a point. Neither of them had ever been there before, and yet Rey had been able to find her way through the thick entanglements of undergrowth as though she'd lived there her whole life. If she, a scrappy former scavenger with minimal training in the ways of the Force could do it, why couldn't he?

Of course, Ben had always had a sizeable measure of self-doubt, the one thing that had always snagged him just as he was about to jump head first into something that would either make him stronger or break him. Most of the things he'd allowed himself to do since renouncing the Jedi way in favor of Snoke's regime of darkness had been individual nails he'd hammered into his own coffin, an extra layer of dirt thrown over the lid, leaving little space for any light to squeeze in. So one could say that he'd come to doubt his own judgement considerably over the past few years, as it only seemed to lead to the destruction of the things he held most dear, and greater weakness on the part of his soul.

This wasn't like those times. Why? Because _she_ was there with him. Standing defiantly beside him, her fists resting on her hips, smiling up at him as though nothing in the world could possibly be wrong in this moment. Ben envied her ability to see the light side in most things. Even darkness itself could not sway her overall positive outlook on the true nature of the Force. It was one of the many reasons why, in the time they'd known each other, Ben had come to not only respect her as his equal in all things, but also to...care for her.

After staring into the trees for a full minute, he looked back at Rey. Her eyes were bright with anticipation, and she inclined her head to the side, indicating that he should probably just go for it, whatever _it_ was in this situation.

"I...I don't know what to do," Ben said at last, feeling defeated. Rather than teasing him, however, Rey propped her staff up against a tree and walked over to him, resting both of her hands over his. Then she gently lifted his left arm until it extended straight out in front of him, fingers relaxed and reaching out. An instant of shame at having to be helped by a scavenger girl faded as quickly as it came when he remembered that _Rey_ was helping him, and that this truly was the beginning of a whole new journey for him.

"Just...let go of yourself for a moment," said Rey, her voice dropping to just above a whisper. "Remember that although we were sent here as prisoners, we came here as students. Students in search of answers, in search of meaning, rebirth, balance. Remember that no matter what happens, the Force brought us here for a reason, and we must trust it and decide for ourselves what is best to do with what the Force has put before us."

Ben Solo began to relax, letting all his self-deprecations slowly slip away into his peripheral consciousness. Rey's voice coaxed him from their grasp, wrenching him from the darkness of self-doubt, insecurity, and fear.

"It's alright to be afraid, Ben," she said. "Anger, sadness, confusion, even frustration, they're all natural. But those feelings do not dictate what you chose to do with them. It's the choices we make, right here, right now, that make us who we are, not those we made in the past, or those we might make in the future. We learn from our failures, take away what makes us wiser from each experience, good or bad. We find balance between the light and the dark of all things. All things contain both sides of the Force. You have that balance within you, too. You just have to realize it, find it, trust it, and then let it fill you up until there is no room for any doubt."

"Do you really go through all this in your head before making decisions?" Ben asked.

"Shut up and pay attention," Rey snipped. After that, Ben was careful not to say another word while she instructed him

At first his arm ached from holding it up for so long. But as the Force began to flow through him and out from him, seeking out and touching every substantial thing that surrounded them as far as the eye could see, the steady pulse of energy soothed his muscles, and he remembered his strength again.

"Now," Rey whispered into his ear, her fingers still lightly touching Ben's outstretched hand, "Breathe deeply. Reach out. And see."

Ben breathed.

He reached out.

And he saw everything.

Not just the lakes and rivers and reservoirs, but the roots that criss-crossed far beneath their feet, spilling out and consuming nutrients, the crystals and other sparkling minerals that lived deep within the mountains, the shape of the mountains themselves in stunning detail, the breath exchanged from tree to tree, which then circulated into the atmosphere, sustaining all life within the biosphere. Everything that moved, lived, died, and was reborn within the flow of the Force.

Ben's eyes snapped open. Rey jumped slightly, her eyes still fixed intently on him. "What did you see?"

"Water. Fresh water. A lot of it. Straight ahead."

"A lot of water"turned out to be an understatement. The gentlest waves of pure, silver liquid lapped at the toes of their shoes. Rey felt the icy freshness of the mountain water seeping in through the wool of her boots. Her feet longed to jump out of their fabric confines and splash around in the fringes of what was perhaps the biggest lake either of them had ever seen. It seemed to stretch on for miles in either direction, and Rey wondered if she were to run along the banks, would she ever reach the end?

They could just barely make out the other side of the lake, shrouded as it was by a thick morning mist, blurring the rustic brown of the tree bark into the vibrant greens of their outstretched branches. They just stood there, looking right back at them, a line of silent, frozen guardians, dusted with frost from the night but pumping with the same warm quintessence that had flowed through their veins for ages.

The forest still surrounded them, all-seeing, all-breathing, heedless of the ruptured peace that went on in the galaxy beyond. The trees seemed to lean in, anxious to see what the two Force-users would do next.

Both Rey and Ben breathed in unison, twin puffs of crystallized breath leaving their lips and wandering into the cold morning air.

"Well, you were right about the water," said Rey, adding her voice to the murmur of the waking forest all around them. It blended in so perfectly with the environment that Ben had hardly noticed she'd spoken at all. Her words spread out like the faintest ripples over the great lake, just another part of nature that had always been there but had never been detected.

"Yeah," he replied.

Rey stepped forward slightly, allowing her shoes to get just a little more wet. "We should stay here for a while. Get to know the place, you know?" Glancing back at Ben, she saw that he'd finally broken off his intent fixation with the water to look at her. He nodded in approval, and Rey smiled.

"Did you bring rations?" he asked, his attention once more drifting back to the shimmering lake.

"You know I did," said Rey, already digging into her satchel for something mildly appetizing. "We should build a fire. Just a little one, to keep warm until the temperature picks up a bit." Ben agreed and walked off into the woods they'd just come from in search of firewood, while Rey set about preparing their snack. It would be, more or less, the same thing they'd had for breakfast, but with less meat and more processed vegetable packets, too salty for their own good. Luckily, Rey had brought along two cups so that they could make use of their newly discovered source of refreshment if need be.

Ben soon returned with a small armload of twigs and branches, and with much difficulty on his part, and very little helpful advice from Rey, a tiny fire was started. It soon grew, and was enough to keep their exposed fingers from freezing off. Mornings on Laris would always be chilly, but Rey suspected that winter would be coming soon, and with it the promise of exponentially colder nights. The sooner they learned to create their own source of heat, the better.

The two of them sat facing each other across the fire, neither of them looking at the other. They munched on their rations slowly, and sipped the cups which Rey had filled up with lake water with glee. One round of rations comprised of at least ten rounds of fresh, mountain water. The minute it spilled past her lips, Rey thought she might die from the sheer pleasure it brought to her entire body. The water was, without a doubt, the purest either of them had ever drunk in their lives.

Ninety percent of the water on Jakku was fully saturated with dust and sand, and sometimes happabore saliva; even the bottles that Unkar gave to scavengers who'd earned it always had a faint metallic aftertaste that was sour on the tongue, although most of them only thought of the hydration it would bring. Water was water, whether it was clean or, more likely, not, always the most sought after commodity among those who lived there, regardless of where it had been before it was finally drunk by parched lips and swallowed by dry throats.

Ben, on the other hand, had spent most of his life on starships which had plenty of water ready for anyone who stepped up to a replicator and requested it. But even that water, filtered though it was, could not come close to the sweetness which danced on his tongue when he'd taken his first long swig from the Laris lake. Like heaven itself entering his mouth, consuming his whole body even as he consumed it, drink after drink after drink. They became afraid that they might drink the entire lake dry before noon, even though no matter how many times Rey went back to refill their cups, the lake remained full.

"You know, Ben," Rey said between gulps, "you really should learn to trust yourself more often."

Ben smiled to himself, and it made Rey feel suddenly much warmer inside. She smiled back. His face rippled in the heat waves of the flame, making it seem almost dream-like. And Rey found herself praying to the Force itself that this wasn't a dream. That they were truly here, together, feeling the gorgeous sting of ecstasy from the water trickling through their veins.

Once they were so full of water they thought they might burst, Rey set aside her empty cup and turned to observe the ebb and flow of the lake's surface again. Ben followed suit. Even the faintest ripples were mesmerizing, and the lake as a whole danced in the growing light of day, its gentleness transcending even the land that cupped it, murmuring to them as it licked at their toes, asking them softly to please enter, forsake the land for just a little while, take to dreams waiting beneath the glowing silver surface. Transfixing them, not with any trace of deception, but with the faintest inkling of a mother's lullaby as she rocks her child to sleep.

The sun finally climbed over the canopy, bathing the whole lake in golden light. A gradual warmth had eked into Rey's belly, a new thirst, a new desire to become one with the water, or at the very least, to be _in_ the water. She stood up suddenly, startling Ben out of his own reverie. After discarding her satchel, she instantly began to undress, shrugging off her stiff jacket, unhooking her belt, pulling her hair out of its tight buns and shaking it out gleefully, and finally, removing her shirt from her body. Though the sun now shone down on them completely, goosebumps rose up on nearly every inch of her skin. She barely noticed it, and the chill passed almost as quickly as it had come over her.

"You know, I really think we should set some boundaries," said Ben, still sitting on the ground. This time, Rey acknowledged him, grinning to herself as she looked down at Ben's reddened face. She liked making him just a little uncomfortable, a small kind of payback she could deliver without using words or weapons.

All the tension in Rey's body began to drain out of her the second the water surrounded her ankles. She'd braced herself for a shock of ice-cold, and was surprised to find that it wasn't as freezing as she thought it would be. The longer she stood in it, the warmer it got, absorbing the heat from the sun and from her body.

Rey thought that the lake must have been imbued with some mysterious healing power. It sparkled blindingly all around her, studded with thousands of shards of scattered starlight. Rey opened her palms, spreading her fingers wide at her sides. Her feet drank up whatever magick the sun was pouring into the water as she breathed deeply, in and out, feeling the vibrations of the air as it moved through the lake, and through her. The currents caressed her ankles, blown along by each little breeze sweeping down from the mountaintops to kiss the lake's quivering surface, skimming over and through her skin, coaxing open all of her pores to filter sunlight and fresh air into her blood.

All at once, her heart began to beat fiercely, exhilaration filling her up like a shaken bottle of fizz. A burst of excitable laughter exploded from her chest as she dove face-first into the water. As Rey paddled further away from the shore, diving deeper below, she let it consume her, fill her, flow through her and surround her. Now she was the one being drunk by the lake. Rey couldn't remember ever feeling so free.

Ben had stood up by now and was staring after the spot where she last appeared above water. Each time he saw her head bob back up, she'd instantly dive back down again. She'd given herself to the lake as freely as one might give an offering to a god. Ben stood stock still on the beach, his boots digging into the soft gravel.

When Rey came up again, she rubbed the water from her eyes and turned to see what Ben was still doing on land. She paddled closer back to shore.

"Ben, what are you doing? Get in the kriffing water!" she shouted back at him. She sensed the apprehension that was holding him back. She looked at him as she continued to tread in the chin-high waters. "Can't you swim?"

No, of course he couldn't. He'd never had the chance to learn. Rey wasn't exactly an expert herself, but she could at least keep her head above water. Searching through his feelings, she detected the microscopic twinge of fear, that fear that lives in everyone faced with trying something new that could potentially kill them. In Ben's case, it was drowning.

"Leia and Han never took you swimming when you were little?" she asked, paddling closer until she could feel the gravel beneath her toes.

"Never had the time," he said matter-of-factly.

Rey bit her lip, wishing she hadn't asked him such a silly question with such an obvious answer.

"Take off your boots at least, give your feet a chance to feel the water."

Ben removed his boots and stepped up to the edge of the lake, where the water warbled on as it lapped against the shore. Ben let it lick his toes, flinching for a moment, then relaxing as he shuffled further in, stopping when the water had wrapped itself around his ankles.

"See, it won't bite you," Rey chortled, pulling herself back to solid ground. In a moment she was standing before Ben, searching deep into his eyes for that spark of Solo bravery. For a moment she forgot how uncomfortable it was to stand so close to him, especially when she wore little more than her undergarments, as rivulettes of water streamed down her back, pooling at her feet. She knew she was probably a sight, but she didn't care. She put her hands on her hips again, the stance that meant to Ben Solo that he was about to be challenged. He tried avoiding her piercing gaze by glancing down at his bare feet, watching as the waves broke upon his ankles, sending shivers up and down his spine.

"You should probably take off your shirt next," said Rey, nonchalantly. Ben's head jerked back up and he caught her playful stare once more. He was glad that his hair covered his ears, because they both felt like they were on fire, and he was sure that if Rey could see them they would be the brightest shade of red.

Rey's disarming look killed the fuss that was about to jump out of his mouth, and her eyes stayed fixed to his face as he pulled his shirt over his head. The process of taking it off had tousled his hair, and Rey, once again, couldn't help but smile. She dared not move her gaze down even an inch. She could already feel Ben shivering from the sudden exposure to the breeze.

She moved closer to him so that they were now at arms length. "Take my hand," she said, keeping her voice calm so as not to alarm him. She reached out and grasped both of his hands tightly but gently. Then she began to walk back, leading him further and further into the lake. His chest had begun to rise and fall rapidly. "Ben, look at me," she said. He looked at her, and their eyes locked once more. "It's going to be okay. Alright?"

Ben nodded in response. He was still nervous, but not nearly as frightened as he had been a moment ago. Rey was fully with him, not just a peripheral presence, but a full-frontal figure of safety and calm. He wouldn't have torn his eyes away from her for the world. All at once their connection flowed as easily as the waters around them. Before he knew it, they'd reached the waist-deep point. The water licked at his torso, coaxing him further and further in. His eyes never strayed from Rey's face. Her freckles were illuminated by the sun, and her eyes seemed to shine ten times brighter.

Soon the water had inched up to his collarbones. The ripples were soothing, and Ben found that he enjoyed just standing in the water, completely surrounded on all sides by the lake. He could stay there all day, enveloped, protected. But Rey, as it turned out, had different plans.

"Hold on tight," she said.

"What?"

The next thing he knew, they were under water.

The lake enveloped them in liquid arms of silence and deep blues melting into the greener shade of the depths below. All that Ben could see was Rey's face, their fingers laced together, sinking lower and lower.

They began to spin around slowly, like two people dancing in space. They moved ever closer to one another, until their foreheads were touching. They blew bubbles into each other's faces until they were all out of breath and had to return to the surface.

The morning light returned with the cacophony of the many voices of the forest. They breathed once more, deeply, in and out, together. The brightness of the sunlight shocked them out of whatever beautiful trance the water had put them under, and they both began to swim back to shore together.

Rey looked back at Ben, who was just coming up behind her, as she trudged back up the beach. His eyes seemed darker now, not in a sinister way, but in a deeper way. As though being in the water had opened up another level of depth in his soul.

His hair had been slicked back behind his ears. Rey was genuinely surprised that this was the first time she'd ever noticed them. She understood how others might see them as larger than normal. But to her, they were absolutely normal.

Her eyes wandered down a bit, noticing the shimmering light that reflected off of his wet chest. He wasn't as...large as he'd been the first time she'd seen him like this, that night on Ahch-To when the Force connected them at the most uncomfortably inconvenient time. Back then, Rey had been terrified of their connection, of him. She'd hated him with an unrivaled passion that had consumed her ever since she saw him kill his own father, Han Solo. Their moments of connection during the time she spent on Luke's island had softened her stony anger, eroding it until it was smoother than a pebble in a stream. Somehow, the heavy hatred she'd harbored for him for so long had been carried away as swiftly as a leaf on the wind, leaving her with anger still, but mixed with something else. Something new that she'd never felt before for anyone. It was something that Luke had mentioned once during her training, something like passion, but much gentler. _Compassion_ , she remembered. What she'd felt for Ben that night in the hut when they'd touched skin-to-skin for the first time, when they'd seen each other's future, as the connection had wound itself ever tighter around them. What she felt for Ben even now, only stronger. Much stronger.

Ben seemed to have lost quite a bit of weight since that day on Crait, when the Force had connected them once more, and though they couldn't see each other physically, they'd looked into each other's eyes, seeing anger, despair, heartbreak, sadness...and compassion. He was still undeniably strong, his muscles standing out just as boldly as the first time Rey had seen them unobscured. Perhaps it was because they were both feeling so much more vulnerable in that moment. So much more like who they were deep down, as though the water had washed away all their outer layers of defense, leaving behind little else that they could use to protect themselves from one another.

"I should've brought towels," she said, more as an afterthought than an actual statement.

Ben grinned. "The cold doesn't bother me."

"That's good to know. I've only spent the last fifteen-or-so years of my life on a desert planet, whereas you've spent most of your miserable existence _in_ space. Congratulations on being so much tougher than me."

"I am not tougher than you," said Ben, catching onto Rey's jesting tone, "and you know it."

"Yet somehow I've succumbed to your dark-side wiles and Solo charm already. You could smother me in my sleep and I'd be powerless against you."

"I thought we'd agreed that we wouldn't joke about my more murderous side," said Ben, stepping closer to her. "If you were anyone else but you, smothering would be a real probability at this point."

"And just what is that supposed to mean, hot-shot?" Rey's hips jutted defiantly, and she planted her hands firmly on them. She stared, once again, into his breathlessly dark eyes.

Ben had a new smile on his face. It wasn't happy, but it wasn't anything else either. It seemed almost twisted in a way, reminding Rey of the way he'd looked at her when he'd held her prisoner on Starkiller Base, after he'd removed his helmet, revealing his face to her for the first time, when he'd told her that he could take whatever he wanted from her. Rey gulped the memory down.

"Funny," he said, "I remember my mother calling my father a hot-shot at least a hundred times. I didn't know what it meant back then. Now, I think I have a vague understanding."

Rey forced an awkward smile onto her face, turning away from him to gather up her things around the still-smouldering campfire. "It was Leia's nickname for Poe. I'd heard her call him that dozens of times. I thought it had a nice ring."

"Huh," said Ben, looking comically confused, "And all this time I'd assumed it was merely a term of endearment reserved for dysfunctional married couples."

"I don't like where this conversation is going," said Rey, throwing on a jacket, not even bothering to put on her shirt first, "And your parents were not dysfunctional. I thought you, of all people would know that."

"First of all, I never said that my _parents_ were dysfunctional, I said that their _marriage_ was. And secondly, what do you mean, you don't like where the conversation is going?"

"Look, sometimes I say things that even I don't fully understand. I'm not perfect, you know," said Rey, genuinely flabbergasted now.

"I know," replied Ben. His smile was gentle again, and he still hadn't taken his eyes off of her. It was starting to give Rey a weird feeling.

"Good, so let's drop it then, shall we?"

"Yeah, let's do that."

"Good."

"Good." Slinging her satchel over her head and stuffing her shirt inside, along with their cups, Rey picked up her staff, turned around and started back into the forest, leaving Ben truly confused now. He hurriedly pulled his shirt back on, grateful for the warmth it had absorbed from the sun, and rushed after her.

Rey was angry at him. _Really_ angry. But she had no idea why. And it infuriated her even more. Why was she angry? Why was he so annoying? Why was he being such an insufferable prick? Why was she being so sensitive about everything? Why, why, why?!

She'd been so deep in thought she barely noticed when she stumbled into a field of the most beautiful wild flowers she'd ever seen. The smell was what first hit her, potent, but not sickeningly so. It was a dreamy kind of scent, the kind of smell that reminds people of when they were younger, happier, when things were simpler and the smell of wild flowers was the whole world and they were a small part of it. It stopped Rey dead in her tracks, knocking the resolve right out of her, pulling tears from her eyes that she thought had been safely locked inside her heart. But now her throat ached, her heart pounded in her head, and any control she had a moment ago slipped through her grasp.

She didn't feel Ben coming up behind her. But he had felt the sudden rush of pain that flooded her heart. It was a pain he knew all too well.

He found her standing at the edge of a field of purple and blue wild flowers, the most overpowering fragrance of beauty and long-forgotten innocence sucking him in the moment he arrived. Why was this place causing Rey so much pain? And why was it ripping memories of his childhood, of his mother's warm voice in the middle of the night, of his father's eyes, from the back of his mind and pulling them to the forefront, as clear as anything he'd ever seen before?

Then he understood. The reason why this place of beauty was killing Rey was because she'd never had that kind of childhood. Even with all the pain and neglect that Ben had suffered, it had still been filled with love. Rey had never known love like that. Their childhoods were both far cries from what a normal child should have had to go through, but at least Ben had known his parents. Rey couldn't even remember what they looked like, how it felt to be held in her mother's arms, to be comforted when she was afraid, to be cared for, to be loved. Somehow, this place laid bare all memories of the past for both of them, putting fresh clarity into distant recollections that had been forgotten long ago.

All the peace that had been instilled in Rey's body at the lake was zapped completely from her system. Now, all the felt was pain. Tears streamed down her face, and the more she tried to hold them back, the more they came to sting her hot, trembling cheeks.

Ben moved to put his hand on her shoulder, to give her some sense of comfort in the depths of her despair. But no sooner had he touched her, than she flinched as though he'd shocked her with electricity, violently shoving his hand away. The sudden change in her emotions startled him, and he had no idea what to make of it. She still felt pain, sadness, but now there was searing anger, and it burned him like a red-hot iron. Her eyes blazed into his soul, overflowing with tears, yet still managing to incinerate everything in their path, including him.

"Don't touch me!" she shouted. She was breathing fast, her arms rigid at her sides, her stance a powerful mix of defensive and offensive. Ben wasn't sure if she was going to attack him or sprint into the forest, never to be seen again. Or both.

"Rey...I…"

"What? You what, Ben?!" Her jaw was strung tight, her lips shaking uncontrollably. Her whole body was shivering, and it wasn't because she was still wet.

"I...I understand," he said. He meant it with every fiber in his body. And he knew she wouldn't believe him before she opened her mouth to spit back at him.

"No you don't! You don't know what this is like," she gestured to the flowers, and Ben had a feeling she meant what was going on in her head right now. "You can never know what this is like, don't you see? You can't!"

"Yes, I can, Rey," said Ben. "We are bound by more than just the Force, you know that. We have known the same pain, the same loss, the same anger. We've both felt the urge to destroy everything that ever caused us that pain, and we both fought back against it. You more than me, but we both fought. We may have been put into vastly different circumstances, but the scars we bear are identical. Nothing can change that, nothing will ever change that."

"Is it because you hate yourself so much?" Rey cried, her passion dying down but still powerful. "Because you despise your very existence? Is that why you resent your parents? For loving one another enough to bring you into the world?"

"I did not resent them, Rey."

"I never even knew my parents!" she screamed, stepping so close to him that their eyes were only inches apart. "They were gone before I even knew what it meant not to have them, to need them so much that I wanted to die. They left me before I knew how much I needed them, how precious the thought of seeing them again was to me. Do you have any idea what that's like?"

"Yes, Rey. I do." His tone of voice wiped out any remaining fire power in her response, and she continued to resist even as she realized that he was telling her the truth, that she knew he was right. She knew he understood how she felt more than anyone ever had or ever could. So why was she still angry with him? Was it even still anger that she felt? Or was it something else?

"I hate you," she said, barely above a whisper. Their noses were touching now. Their eyes flitted back and forth, unsure of which to settle on. "I hate you." Her voice was all but gone from the statement. It was a lie she told herself now. She could barely hear herself say it. Her left hand had fallen upon his chest, her right now found its way to his neck, sliding up ever so slowly, inching closer to his chin, his jaw, his cheek. Their bond murmured with anticipation, quivering between them, through them, around them. Ben's fingers played with Rey's wet, wavy strands of hair, pasted to the sides of her face by the water, darkened by the dampness, except for the places touched by the sun, which shone almost golden. Her eyes were no longer fierce, no longer furious, but filled with longing. So were his.

"Let's go home," said Ben, stepping away from Rey's unconscious touch, letting the bond's energy fade as he made his way through the field of wildflowers. Rey's hands fell limply back to her sides. She felt she could hardly breath, and yet the breath came and went as it always had. Her heart was silent once more, and Rey wondered if it had abandoned her body along with the strength she once had.

Pulling herself together, she tightened her grip on her quarterstaff and followed Ben through the field and back into the forest.


	8. Chapter 8: Promise

_**Chapter Eight: Promise**_

Neither of them slept well that night. Nor did they sleep well for many nights after. The days, weeks, and months came and went, and with them, so did Rey's ability to look at Ben the same way. She'd been foolish enough to think that everything had been mended between them. That his sins could be forgiven overnight. That _her own_ transgressions, faults, blindnesses, could go unpunished. She'd always misjudged him. As a man and as a boy. As a villain and a hero. She'd made the horrible mistake of only seeing his darkness, and then pushing it all aside to root out his light. When all was said and done, she was just as much to blame as he. Not for his actions, of course, those were his responsibility. But for everything else. She should have seen clearer, should have understood that no one can be completely dark or light. Not if there was to be any semblance of balance in the Force. She'd have to come to terms with _both_ sides of him now, as difficult and frightening as the task may be. She'd have to try again to draw him out of his shell, _all_ of him.

These were a few of the many thoughts that plagued her during the restless nights that followed their confrontation in the field of wildflowers. Things had been colder between them after that, and neither of them seemed to have the courage to take the first steps to rekindle whatever had been doused in their friendship.

Could it really be called _friendship_ now? Rey supposed it could. After all, they'd fought together, talked to each other, confided in one another, touched...and this only made it harder to discern. But were they still enemies? It had only been a year since Ben Solo had renounced the First Order. Did that fire of conflict still burn within them, that mirror image of an all-consuming flame? Or had things cooled down now for the better?

Either way, Rey still found herself wanting to touch him in the night. Ben found himself wanting the same. In their own separate rooms, they'd stop what they were doing for moments at a time to look down at their bare hands, summoning the memory of their first fleshly contact through their bond, all those nights ago on Ahch-To, when they'd all but sworn an alliance by telling each other that they were not alone. Could it all have been a dream? An illusion weaved by the cunning hands of Snoke? Or was it real?

Finally, after months of unbearable tension, Rey decided to break it once and for all. Not knowing precisely how she would do that, she jumped out of bed, rushed out her door, and stormed down the hallway to Ben's room. She felt like putting her fist through his door, but thought better of it, as it would hardly help their situation any more than not talking to him as she had been doing. So instead, she softly knocked, clearing her throat.

"Ben? Can I talk to you, please?" The door opened almost instantly. Clearly he'd been as unsuccessful in sleep as she had been, the perfectly coiffed condition of his hair indicating that his head had barely touched the pillow at all. Again, he wore no shirt. Rey couldn't imagine why this was making it so difficult for her to look directly at him as he leaned expectantly in the doorway. In her exasperation, she'd neglected to prepare any kind of conversation starter, so for almost a full minute they just stood there, looking in every other direction but that of each other's faces, breathing, shifting from foot to foot, scratching the backs of their necks, and not talking.

"Are you going to invite me in?" Rey said finally. "Or shall we just go back to square one and forget about it?"

Ben moved aside and Rey entered his room, barely looking at him as she brushed past, muttering _Thank you_.

Rey plopped down on the edge of his bed and motioned for him to join her. He took his place at her side, and for a while there was more drawn-out silence between them, impregnating the room with all they wished they could say, all the rude things they didn't have the courage to spit at one another, and all the nice things they'd forgotten how to articulate.

"I've been thinking…" Rey started.

"Yes?" said Ben.

"We should start, um, training when summer rolls back 'round."

"Training?"

"Yes. You know, to keep us in shape. I couldn't bear to see you lose any more muscle skulking around the bunker all day."

"And I can't stand by while you get so thin I could snap you in two without even trying."

They both burst out laughing at their hopeless efforts at genuine humor.

"Gosh, are we really this twisted?" said Rey.

"I'm afraid so," said Ben, smiling wider than he'd smiled in a month.

Rey breathed a sigh of relief at having cleared the first hurdle: talking. "You know," she carried on, "when I was a scavenger on Jakku, I kept a journal. A _diary_ , really. And when I'd have no one else to talk to, this little blank book with no ability to speak gave me more comfort than any of the other scavengers could have. In many ways, it really was my only friend."

"Until you met the droid. And the traitor." Rey's look made him eat the word almost as soon as he'd uttered it, and he gulped nervously, desperate to fix his mistake. "I mean, FN-2187." Rey wasn't amused, and amusement was clearly his intent at this point. Finally, he couldn't take her burning stare any longer and he buckled, exhaling loudly. "Finn. Until you met the droid and...Finn."

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" said Rey, patting him on the leg, then immediately discarding her hand, a dim blush creeping up her cheeks.

"Sorry," said Ben. "I guess I'm just...not used to seeing him as a human being. Guess that makes me one sick kriffing bastard, doesn't it?"

Rey giggled. "Well, yes. But don't let your mother hear you say that." The hearty laughter that ensued bit down on the stubborn tension between them until it crumbled, and they were left with nothing but themselves and each other once more.

Wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, Rey said, "Don't think this changes anything."

"And what, precisely, would this change," inquired Ben.

"You're still a sick, twisted fiend who fully deserves every last ounce of torment and suffering you've gotten up to this point."

"Does that include you not talking to me?" said Ben, his tone tainted with smugness.

"Yes, but that part's going to stop as of tonight," said Rey.

"Oh kriff, just when I thought my torment was over."

Rey punched him in the arm for his insolence, eliciting an _Ow!_ from Ben. Rey sniggered.

"Ha, I knew it, you are going soft! Just my bloody luck I got exiled on this godforsaken planet with an insensitive bantha-kisser who can't even take a friendly jab."

"And the only thing more painful than your weak-ass punches are your awful puns," Ben retorted, barely keeping himself from cradling the bruise that had already begun to turn up on his arm.

"And you still owe me for saving your life, Solo," said Rey, cocking an eyebrow at him. "And for not killing you at least a dozen times when I easily could have."

"Clearly you haven't been staying updated on recent events of the past year, but _I_ saved _your_ life and didn't kill you when I had the chance more times than I can remember. So I'd say that the tables have turned on that count...garbage-picker."

"Actually," said Rey, getting up to stand before Ben with her arms folded over her chest, "I'd say that that makes us even...sleemo."

"Oh you do, do you?" said Ben, rising from the bed to his full, intimidatingly large height. Rey was unswayed, despite the fact that her head only came up to his chin.

"Um-hm," said Rey, tilting her head up. Her eyes skimmed softly over the surface of his face, resting for a moment on his fading scar. Once again, they stood practically chest-to-chest. This time, they neither noticed nor were they deterred by their intimate proximity to one another. Rey's hands found their usual challenging position on her hips as she faced off with the massive man before her. Ben looked contemplatively into her eyes, turning up the corners of his lips slightly.

"Has it always been this way between us? A competition? A never-ending battle of nerves? It's becoming an unbreakable cycle with us, isn't it."

"'Fraid so, hot-shot," said Rey. Her eyes moved over his mouth, then immediately returned to his eyes. "Winter should be in full swing within the next couple of months. We ought to at least do some hunting before it starts to snow."

"I agree," said Ben.

Rey's wandering gaze froze, taking in all of his face. "It is a rare thing," she thought aloud.

"What?"

"That you and I agree on something."

Ben smiled at the floor. "Come on. I'm sure we'd have plenty to agree on. If only we'd just stop fighting about things."

"Precisely," mused Rey. Finally she backed away, stopping in the doorway to look back at him. His silhouette in the moonlight that flooded through his window struck her as singularly isolated. He still hadn't taken his eyes off her, and it stirred something unknown within Rey. "Try to get some sleep," she said, "We'll start hunting tomorrow. And who knows, maybe we'll find enough in this forest to survive our first winter."

The hunting equipment Chewbacca had lent them mostly consisted of a variety of models of bowcasters, each honed to the highest precision and tuned to limits of their possible fire power by their owner. As the pair looked over what they'd been given the next morning they wished, not for the last time, that Chewie had given them clearer instructions on how to use them. Both Rey and Ben knew how to fire blasters, but it had been a while since either of them had had occasion to use them in a fight. Ben did not have nearly as much skill in marksmanship as Rey, and although they both chose a gun that they felt most comfortable with, Rey would end up doing most of the shooting. Even then, they had only been able to kill less than half of what they'd planned to their first day, and neither of them were surprised with their lack of success.

Rey could remember a time when just the thought of owning a blaster excited her, having nothing to protect herself with but her physical strength, cunning, and her quarterstaff on Jakku. When Han Solo gave her her first blaster, she'd been as overjoyed as a child on Life Day, eager to hone her sharp abilities to a new skill. She remembered when she'd killed a stormtrooper with it that same day on Takodana when the First Order destroyed the Hosnian System and invaded Maz Kanata's castle, remembered the strange mixed feeling of horror, adrenaline, and satisfaction it had given her. She remembered trying to use it to kill Ben when they first met, and again on Starkiller after he killed his father. Rey tried not to think on those particular recollections, as they only brought a sour taste to her tongue and a dull ache to her chest. And she'd see how the pain of these memories had become lodged in Ben's spirit like shrapnel from an explosion, and thus had always tried not to mention them to him.

At best, their catch for the day would yield a hearty lunch and dinner, but not nearly enough to sustain them for the rest of the week, let alone the remainder of the year. So out they went the next day, this time catching double what they'd been able to kill the previous day. They caught mostly small animals of the woods, birds, and even fish from the lake. Their hunting skills grew exponentially day by day, and by the end of the week, they'd gathered enough food to keep them fed for the rest of the month at least.

By the end of the month they were both able to admit to one another that they shared a mutual dislike for hunting as a whole. They laughed about it while sitting by the fireplace in the bunker's living room, sucking the last scraps of juicy meat from the bones of their filling dinner. They sat next to each other on the soft carpeted floor, sipping glasses of sparkling white wine imported from Coruscant which they'd procured from the bunker's full liquor cabinet. Neither of them had much experience with alcohol, so after their first glass they both felt their minds begin to stray from the path of reason.

"I think you and I have had enough for one night," said Rey, reaching over Ben to grab the half-empty bottle at his side.

"Are you sure about that?" joked Ben. "Because I think that stuff could have kept us drunk for at least a week if you ask me."

"We're not drunk, Solo."

"Oh certainly not. _We're_ not drunk by any means. I'm just a little tipsy. _You're_ the one who was hogging all the wine, remember?"

"Was not," said Rey, even though she knew he was right. The liquor had given her such a tingly feeling that she simply couldn't resist pouring herself another glass after her first. And another after that.

Ben pried the bottle from Rey's fingers and got up to put it back in the cabinet, nearly knocking over a chair in the process of stumbling to and from the kitchen. His liquor-induced clumsiness caused Rey to roll back onto the carpet in a fit of laughter she was finding it increasingly difficult to control.

"No more wine for you, little scavenger," said Ben, rejoining Rey on the floor.

"Yes, Sir," affirmed Rey through spurts of fading giggles.

Ben sighed, lazily reclining onto his back beside Rey. She rolled onto her stomach so she could look at his relaxed face, reflecting the flickering firelight on its smooth, unobstructed surface. His eyes closed, he looked so peaceful, so harmless, and she had the faintest sensation of wanting to bring her face closer to his.

"Do I frighten you?" she asked him.

Ben looked up at the ceiling. "Every minute of every day. There's no telling when you might pounce on me when I least expect it like the ferociously feral little thing you are."

"I anticipated that cheeky answer," said Rey, aware of her tongue growing weary, making her words slur.

"And?"

"And...I'm sure I'll think up an equally clever comeback later."

Ben looked over at her, once again overcome by the urge to take in every inch of her face. The faint smile that appeared on his lips didn't escape Rey's notice.

"What?" she said.

"It's just...you look...nice." The feeble compliment was a far cry from what he wanted to say. The glow of the fire spilled over her face, highlighting the gentle part of her lips, the graceful arch of her eyebrows, her half-closed eyelids, and the way her loose, dark hair hung down around her face in muted waves, curling slightly where it lightly touched her shoulders. Ben had always known that she was beautiful, from the first moment he saw her. But he seemed to realize it fully only in this moment, when their minds were not as guarded as usual, when they seemed to be closer together than ever, connecting on a more human level than they had before. They could be completely devoid of any Force-sensitivity; seeing Rey's face illuminated this way would still cause that warm feeling to overflow within him.

"Would you dance with me, Ben?" she said suddenly, looking down at her fingers. The odd request was barely discernible from a mumble, and Ben was taken aback at what he was sure he must have heard wrong.

"What?"

"Would. You. Like. To. Dance. With. Me. Ben," she repeated, annunciating each word so that not even a single syllable could escape his understanding.

Ben stared at her. "I'm sure I don't need to tell you that I can't dance."

"And I'm sure I don't need to tell you that that makes two of us. But as you well know, that's never stopped me before. And something tells me that you're not about to let it stop you either." That coy look of hers was back again in full force, conquering Ben's stubbornness at the deepest levels. With one glance she could have plunged into his body and ripped out any vital parts of him she wanted to. Right now, he felt as though he'd just been savagely robbed of his stomach and his wind pipes.

Rey got awkwardly to her feet, and after taking a second to regain her balance, extended her hands to Ben. He groaned, eliciting a playful kick in the side. Stumbling to his feet, he stood before his intoxicated partner, doing everything he could to avoid betraying the earth-shattering nervousness he now felt quivering violently through his body.

"We need some music, don't we?" said Rey, immediately dashing off to another room to retrieve the crate of discs Leia had sent them off with. Neither of them had had occasion to listen to a single album since they got to Laris. It seemed that in her efforts to contribute to their comfort and relaxation in exile, Leia had neglected to realize that in all the years they had been alive, neither Rey nor Ben had cultivated much of anything resembling an actual taste in music.

Despite the considerable weight of the box, Rey managed to transport it from its hiding place to the living room, albeit by way of dragging it all the way down the hall until it came to a halt at Ben's feet. Once this task had been accomplished, Rey straightened up, stretched out her back noisily, then got down on her knees to inspect the cargo. "Get down here and help me, Ben. You have more experience in this area than I do."

"You do realize that I haven't listened to any music in something like twenty years," said Ben, lowering to his haunches to finger through the stacks of silver circular packets.

"Yes, but I have _never_ listened to music. At least not seriously. Sometimes people played it at Resistance gatherings and parties, but other than that I'm as new to this concept as an infant."

"Alright, I get it," Ben huffed, silently skimming through what few memories he had of the music his parents would play for him as a child. Suddenly, in the middle of one of the stacks, his eyes found a particular title which looked vaguely familiar to him. Like a whisper of a voice from a long forgotten day in his past. After easing the packet from the pile, he held it in his fingers, flipping it over, and the memory that had been deeply submerged in the mire of his subconscious climbed back to the surface of his mind. In a tender place at the back of his head, a dimly lit image, consisting of his childhood home on Chandrila, a vantage point from behind a cracked bedroom door into the living room, where his parents, believing him to be asleep, had danced the night away to a simple song on a simple album, the dust from a simpler time still clinging to its scratched surface. His father had shown him the disc once, telling him in hushed tones so his mother wouldn't hear that if he was ever able to ensnare the interest of a special someone, the music on that disc would all but do the rest. _Trust me, son,_ he'd confided in him with a wink and a twinkle in his aged eyes, _She'll be melting like butter in your arms before the night is up_. Ben had been too young to understand what his father was talking about then. Of course, Ben understood perfectly just what his trickster of a father had been getting at all those years ago, while his mother, half-heartedly pretending not to notice the sleazy advice her husband was giving to him, failed to hide her smile out of the corner of his blurry memory.

"This one," said Ben, showing Rey the cover briefly before getting up to put it in the state-of-the-art entertainment system, still in peak condition despite not having been used in over a decade. Once the disc had been inserted, he flipped through the tracks until a familiar slow beat, accompanied by a particularly seductive base line, began to hum through the speakers. After adjusting the volume, Ben hit the repeat button, just in case it took them a few tries to get it right, then returned to Rey, already standing, arms folded across her chest expectantly. The song eased along as Ben stepped closer to her, and though it's base and rhythm were sultry throughout, the emerging melody, played out on some sweetly harmonious instrument, revealed itself to be sincere.

Once again, Rey held out her hands, and Ben took them. A curious shift occurred in their separate momentums, throwing the rhythms of their movements into sync with the rhythm of the music. The minute their hands touched, Rey felt as though she'd been stripped down to her barest self. The familiar connection between them switched on like a light when their eyes met, thrumming along with the pulse of blood in their palms which seemed to meld together now that they were touching. All traces of drunken warmth melted away as Rey rested her hands on Ben's shoulders and he instinctively placed his hands on the curves of her waist, giving way to a new heat.

They nervously began to sway along with the flow of the song, slowly but surely surrendering their senses to the smooth texture of the melody. The words being sung by an unknown, angelic female voice, in a language neither of them could understand, blended so perfectly into the music that they barely recognized it apart from the whole of the song. They didn't think about the music, though it surrounded them like a dome, blurring everything beyond its perimeters. Their eyes fused together, forging an old bridge between them, still strong, though it hadn't been used in a long time.

The fire crackled peacefully, bathing the room in its heat; it danced with them as though the music had taken possession of every moving thing in their small corner of the universe. Rey imagined that even the trees outside had begun to sway along to the song's easy breeze. She didn't even try to look away from Ben's face, for it had transfixed her, just as it had done the first time she'd seen it. So powerful and mysterious it had been then. The power was still there, but a new, sincere quality of mystery had taken the place of the sinister nature of the old one. Looking deeper, she still felt the darkness within, but instead of a raging, volatile beast, it had now settled into a steady, dream-like flow of black mist, still dangerous, but not nearly as cold as before. She found herself wanting more and more to get closer to it, to actually feel it, immerse herself within it the way she had in the lake. This darkness did not frighten her, did not scream at her or reach out for her with monstrous claws. It surrounded her like the tender embrace of an old, long forgotten friend, welcoming, peaceful. Warm.

"I thought you said you hadn't listened to any music in twenty-some years," said Rey, still looking into his eyes as though they might give her more answers than his words would.

"I guess some of the memories you thought had been buried too deep to ever be recovered have a way of coming back to the surface," Ben replied.

"How unnaturally poetic of you." Rey smiled, and Ben looked embarrassed for a moment. "But I'll give you points for trying."

"Trying what?"

"To be romantic." Rey's eyes brightened and Ben tried to keep the heat rising in his cheeks at bay.

"Since when do you know anything about romance, little scavenger?"

"I don't know, but I'll bet I know a hell of a lot more than you do, hot-shot."

"Somehow, I find that hard to believe." Rey giggled, her smile spreading until it seemed to cover nearly all of her face.

"So why did you chose this particular song?"

Ben's face softened. "My mother and father would dance to it some nights when they thought I was asleep. It would bring them back together after fights I was sure would end their marriage. I don't know if this song was what kept them going, but it certainly helped."

Ben's eyes began to glisten with the shadow of tears spent long ago, the wound in his side from Chewie's bowcaster suddenly flaring to life. He tried not to let Rey see the intense pain that had once more taken root within him, but she could feel it just as deeply as he. Without thinking, she brought her hand up to rest on his cheek, giving her own warmth to his shivering features. The music was all but forgotten, even though they continued to rock gently from side to side, and before long Ben had shifted his hand so that it rested in the middle of her back.

Rey didn't need to say anything, Ben could feel the potent essence of her desire to comfort him in the way that she looked at him now, her dark eyes softened by the depth of her compassion for him; it was the same look she'd given him in the elevator on the _Supremacy_ before he brought her to Snoke. Within the space of an instant, almost as small as the tiny compartment they'd stood in, he'd felt her eyes reach out to him, touch him, _feel_ him, just as they did now. Rey held him with much more than just her gaze, now that her hands weren't bound and her feet weren't rooted defiantly to the floor. Now that she'd come to understand him even more than she had the first time they touched. This moment was nothing like the others. Any conflict that still existed between them had washed away, and they stood together as survivors among the ruins of their every fight.

The warmth of their closeness bloomed as it had before, closing the gaps between them as their faces inched closer together and their foreheads touched, shutting out all fear, all doubt, all pain. They closed their eyes and continued to sway as the music faded back into existence around them, gathering closer until it pressed against their bodies, pressing them even closer together. They swayed the night away, unaware of the spiral of time or the movement of planets around stars around galaxies. Unconscious of anything but each other. Everything in their lives up to that point was splayed out around them, unable to reach them the way they were now.

An hour had passed before they realized they'd both been crying softly, silent tears sliding down their faces as they bled into one another the pain they shared. Rey cupped Ben's face, wiping away the tears still leaking from his eyes, even as Ben did the same for her. There was something strange in the way he touched her face. Some missing piece of her concealed within the etchings of his fingerprints, between the lines on his palms, something he gave back to her now in the simple act of holding her like she was all he had.

"Rey?"

"Ben?"

Their eyes met again, pulling eternities of unsaid words into the moments that surrounded them. Rey's eyes drifted toward his mouth again. She could feel her throat tighten, her heart beating so much faster now, shaking her whole body out of balance. Only a breath's distance between their lips, Ben said, "I think the entertainment system is broken." The music, which seemed to have drifted light years away, came stuttering back into focus, stuck on one part of a certain word, repeating over and over again like it couldn't decide whether to die or to keep going forward. Ben wrenched himself away from Rey, making its decision for it by punching his finger into the off button.

Rey stood stunned in the middle of the floor, unsure of what was happening. Nothing was happening. And everything. She sensed something welling up inside of him, a force unlike anything they'd ever felt. Neither anger nor serenity, neither peace nor passion.

After a few moments of staring at the system, filling the silent room with the ragged sound of his breath, Ben finally looked up and turned to Rey. She stood alone, visibly shivering, seeing and feeling everything inside of him from across the room. His jaw clenched then released, his eyes never once straying from hers.

"What?" Rey mouthed the word as though she didn't have the strength to put her voice into it.

In an instant, Ben had closed the distance between them, sweeping Rey into a fierce embrace, and kissing her. At first she resisted, beating feebly against his solid chest, but only for a second. The first moment of the kiss passed through her like a blaster bolt shot through a wall of smoke, then Rey's half-hearted protestations weakened, overcome by the sudden power of his lips against hers. Slowly, her fisted hands relaxed and settled over his chest, snaking upwards to become entangled in his hair. His hands held her face firmly in place, and Rey had no desire to move.

Now she began to kiss him back. Their lips melted into one another rather than simply crashing into each other, the fluid line between them growing ever fainter. Their mouths fought like ravenous beasts, both hungry enough to tear the other apart. There was anger in the kiss, a fire that could burn down cities. Then a tranquilizing passion settled over them, and they began to succumb to one another, allowing their tongues to cross smoothly over the emptiness between them, pouring breath and soft and desperate sighs into one another until they overflowed, spilling out and pooling around their feet.

They held each other tighter than they'd ever held anything or anyone before. Their fingers roved over one another's bodies like hapless explorers lost in a wilderness all their own. Then all at once, it was over. Their lips parted and air rushed in and out of their lungs, trembling through their bodies as they pressed their heads together again, closing their eyes to fall into another waking dream.

Holding each other close, stunned at what had just happened, it seemed they'd crossed over a threshold, passing through a doorway that had stood open for them for a long time. Nothing seemed real anymore. Everything happening around them, in the room they stood in, on the planet, even in the whole galaxy, had shattered, leaving them the only ones still whole. Still standing as one together, as they were always meant to be. Their intertwined destinies merging again and again until they could no longer separate, not unless they wanted to go on living only half lives, empty and broken as they had been for most of their lives until now. The real world resided in the space between their lips, thriving in the heat of their mingling breath, electrified by the energy that radiated from their fixed gaze.

"Rey?"

"Yes, Ben?"

"Promise that you won't leave me ever again. Please." His voice, abandoning all traces of the desperation that had tainted it when he'd first asked her to join him, implored her with the deepest sincerity. Tears once again came to Rey's eyes, but they did not fall. Instead, they stood in her eyes, waiting for her to answer Ben's call. He called out to her soul now, just as he had before, just as he'd always done, even when he'd offered to be her teacher on Starkiller. Deep down, all he'd ever wanted was her soul, not to possess or to imprison, but to share with his own.

Rey wondered if this was what the Force had truly intended for them all along.

"I promise, Ben," she whispered, brushing her lips against his, letting the vow slip through her teeth and leak into his wounded soul, spreading over it and healing it like a balm over burnt flesh. "I promise." And she realized, then and there, it was the realest thing she'd ever said in her life, like carving a piece of her heart out and giving it to him willingly.

"Good night, Ben," she said, kissing him once more on the lips, then rushing off to her bedroom.

She left him standing alone. His heart, once rushing like a mighty river, now spilled out of him like a waterfall, overflowing within him, bursting from his eyes in thick, salty tears. She'd left him alone. But was he truly alone? Could he ever really be alone anymore? _No_ , he decided. _Not anymore_. His resolve grew like a tree, having taken root deep within him, reaching up past the limits of any sky, as strong and alive as anything he'd ever felt before. He finally came to the full realization that they had no masters, no one to tell them what to do or where to go, to push them into boxes too small for either of them. No longer bound to the dark side or the light. Unchained, inhaling the freedom that thrived in between, released. And reborn. No, Rey had not left him alone. Instead, she'd left him with something more rare and precious than any measure of power the dark side or the light could have promised. She'd left him with a piece of her heart. And Ben intended to keep it safe for as long as he lived. He promised himself that whatever the cost or the pain, he would win her full heart. Just as she already had his, in all its broken fragments and forms, so would he have hers one day.


	9. Chapter 9: Dreams and Discovery

_**Chapter Nine: Dreams and Discovery**_

That night, they both had the same dream. They were running together through the forest at night, lit only by bright stars and a full moon. They didn't know where they were going, yet they knew the way, as though it had been programmed into their subconscious at birth. An invisible path of stars opened up before them, leading them to the pile of rocks they'd come across on the day of their arrival. A low hum of energy emanated from that place, calling to them, pulling them near. Only when they reached the clearing, saw the stones once more as large as life, looked up to see Laris' full moon wreathed in stars in the clear sky above them, did they awaken from the dream.

No residues of fear accompanied their waking, yet neither of them felt altogether peaceful either. The thrumming afterglow of adrenaline pulsed through their blood, muted though it was. Rey felt as though she'd just stopped running, her chest tight as a clenched fist, the rapid beat of exhilaration in her heart only beginning to ease back to normal, her breaths shallow and stretched thin.

After several futile attempts at falling asleep again, Ben rolled out of his bed, pulled on a shirt, and shuffled to the front door of the bunker, not wishing to wake Rey. Not bothering to put his boots on, he stepped out into the bone-chilled midnight. A shock of cold shot through his body as his bare feet, unused to being unprotected, touched the slick, dew-coated grass. The sensation passed as quickly as it came.

Squinting into the darkness, he made out a lone figure standing several paces from the bunker. Rey, her back to him, observed the line of nothingness lying between the early-morning sky and the jagged outline of the mountains. Her arms were wrapped around her body, more for personal stability than comfort, motionlessly attuned to the night around her, on the cusp of its natural morning ritual of silent transformation.

She shifted when she felt him coming up behind to stand next to her. He knew even before he asked, the reason why she was awake at the same time, why she, too, felt the need to step outside the confines of the bunker.

"Can't sleep?" he asked. Looking down, he noticed that she was also barefoot.

"Cold," she said. Ben wasn't sure if it was a response or a simple observation of the temperature. He nodded in silent agreement. "It's going to rain," she said.

"How do you know?"

"I can feel it," she replied matter-of-factly. And Ben found that when he pushed his senses into the air around them, straining to listen further than usual, he could almost hear the clouds forming not far off; the static sound of water droplets condensing on particles of air, prickling in his ears, light fingers of electricity running through his hair.

"I feel it too."

Rey smiled. The hairs on the back of her neck settled down as she pulled her focus back to where she stood. She turned to look at him, and her face was soft, capturing the moonlight like it was part of her.

In that moment, Ben felt like he was part of her too. She possessed him, forever pulling him into her as the stars are pulled into the night sky, injecting into him a need for her to take him whole, all at once.

"The Force is connecting us in dreams now," he mused, looking up into the deep, navy sky where stars flickered like candle flames.

"You've always been part of my dreams," said Rey. For some reason her mouth went dry at that moment, perhaps longing for the taste of his again. She swallowed the thought before it could escape.

"So were you." Ben looked to Rey again. "But until now our dreams have always been different. Tonight they were one and the same."

Rey paused pensively, still staring at him. "You saw everything I saw. Felt everything I felt." Ben nodded. "You know what this means, don't you Ben?"

Nodding again, he said, "Something the Force wants us both to see."

"Or something we've already seen that the Force wants us to return to."

"I agree," said Ben. Something itched deep inside of him, aching for discovery.

"Tonight?"

"Tonight."

Rey reached out her hand, open to him. Ben took it, and he truly felt his hand had finally found its rightful place, at home in the shelter of her tender grasp.

The forest received them as they entered its verdant foliage together. The moment they stepped over the threshold separating the clearing from the forest, the rest of the world ceased to exist. All that was left were the trees, reaching up with dancing branches to stir the infinite stars in the sky; and the two of them, barefoot and uncertain, but unafraid. Rey squeezed Ben's hand, a small reminder that no, they weren't still dreaming. The damp cool of the forest floor numbed the bottoms of their feet. They stood perfectly still, barely shivering, though the chill of the retreating night still lingered in the air that pressed against their skin, appearing before them in each long exhale of breath like silver ghosts in the moonlight. There might have been goosebumps on every exposed inch of Rey's body; she felt nothing in that moment but the fierce certainty of Ben's hand in hers, warming her to the bone. They breathed deeply, then began to walk towards their destination.

The trees gathered around them like silent spectators, ancient guardians whose roots held the very ground together beneath their feet, whispering their secret universal knowings to one another as light breezes rustled their leaves. The further they walked, the more the forest consumed them, as it had the first time they'd gone this way, eating away at every layer until nothing was left but them. The sensation wasn't like being stripped and exposed, but rather like being released from a small, personal prison. The solemnity of the woods mingling with the fragrance of the wet soil unlocked every step they took until they reached the small clearing. Neither of them knew how far it was from the bunker, but it seemed to be at once many light years away and just beyond the clearing. In the darkness, glittering in the slowly-fading light of the stars, the stones towered above them, seeming more like a small mountain than the pile of rocks it was in the daylight.

The two hastened to cimb it, instinctively finding the most stable rocks and using them to lift themselves up to the highest stone platform. Standing up once they'd reached the top, they felt like they had risen miles from the forest floor. The canopy opened up above their heads, and the multitude of stars poured into their eyes, spilling into their souls, and all time stopped.

"Here we are again," said Ben, his voice echoing off invisible walls that fell around them.

"This doesn't feel like the same place, does it?" asked Rey.

Ben acknowledged her query with a slight nod. The change that had occurred in that place felt as tangible as the difference between night and day. Yet something familiar stirred beneath the ground, something that snaked up through the rocks and into their feet. The moon shone as bright as the sun, and even though it was still dark, they could see everything around them in the sharpest detail. Shadows leaked from the cracks and crevasses in the pile, seeming to sharpen the stones to a minutely fine edge. Everything was in focus, everything tuned to the deepest levels. The hairs on Rey's arms and on the back of her neck shot straight up, and suddenly she could feel every particle in the air around them. She felt the steady ebb of their connection like a dancing ocean between them; the rain that was yet to come, condensing high above the trees somewhere in the distance; strings of energy coming together and parting wherever they moved.

"Rey," Ben whispered, "Listen." Rey listened. To the deafening static of nothing. All the sounds of the forest had been switched off, leaving them with only the sound of their breaths rushing in and out of them in time to the ever-increasing volume of their heart beats.

Then, just like before, the low throbbing at the base of Rey's skull came, dripping down her spine and spreading out to her feet and fingertips like microscopic rivers of silver light. That same electricity, reaching down from the sky, burrowing deep within her body, and spilling out onto the ground, everything within that small space slowing down while the rest of the world moved on without them. The Force, in its purest form, had struck them once more. But this time, it felt much deeper, much more personal, as though the Force were transferring something of itself to them, granting them some special gift that only they deserved; a blessing, or a curse. Or both. Ignited their bond, traveling back and forth between them at the speed of light until Rey could practically reach out and feel it pulsing in the space that separated them.

The weightless feeling of losing control began to take over, and for once, neither of them fought it, simply letting the Force hold them in place. They trusted the Force with their lives now, and the Force held them like a nurturing mother, feeding them drippings of divine quintessence from her fingers. The Balance shattered throughout their bodies, spreading over them and sinking into them.

And then, just as before, it was all gone in an instant. But something told them that it wasn't truly gone. No, something strange had just taken place, something that had deposited a new life force within them. Something alive and breathing entirely separate from them, yet residing deep within them. They were now hosts to this new presence, the presence of the Force.

"How do you feel?" asked Ben.

"Glad to be out of the cole," said Rey, pulling the woolen blanket tighter around her shoulders.

They'd just gotten back from their rendezvous at the rocks, shivering from the icy sheet of damp deposited on every inch of bare skin by the early morning mist. The sun had just begun to peak over the treetops, and it was the time of day just before the light breaks through when everything is muted and waking. Grays and cloudy blues and greens darker than black blended into each other. The forest was quiet, taking its time waking up like a child shifting it the warm bed that protects him from school.

Yet any silence that existed where they were had been amplified ten times louder now than it was before they ventured into the woods that morning.

"Me too," said Ben. He wished so desperately that he could think of something to say that would make her laugh; his mind was steeped in things too dark to understand, and her voice was the only cure to the weight hanging over his head.

Rey wanted to say something too, feeling just as much dragged down by exhaustion as he. All she could do was reach over and hold his hand, run her thumb over the calluses and rough lines, remembering how warm and tender it had been when they'd touched for the first time. "We have to try to understand what's going on here," she said.

"I think we already do," said Ben, the worn-out look in his eyes morphing into one of genuine curiosity.

"How do you mean?"

Ben searched within him for the right words. His face looked stern, contemplative, the kind of thoughtfulness an artist would want to sketch. "When we first got here," he said, looking into her eyes, "we both felt something was...different somehow."

"Yes," Rey thought back to the moment they'd entered Laris' atmosphere, how it had drawn them in and surrounded them with a force much stronger than gravity. "But I'd assumed it was because the Force is especially strong here."

"It is," said Ben, "As it has been perhaps since the planet was formed. But there's something else, something special about the way that the Force _moves_ here. It isn't just a steady flow surrounding and penetrating everything. It almost feels as though…"

"The Force is a part of the planet," Rey put in, finishing his thought, "Like it moves _with_ the planet, not just _through_ it. It's more tangible here than anywhere else, I think."

"Or at least as tangible as an all-encompassing energy field can be."

"Right." Rey's eyes were alive with the same light which kindled whenever something truly tantalizing caught her attention, a flame which had captured Ben's notice from the first time he'd seen it. "You've been to more worlds than I have," she said, shooting her fire of curiosity straight at him. "What do you think?"

Ben grinned. "You know what I think."

Rey looked contemplative, then smiled knowingly back at him. "You've never felt the Force so strongly in any other place. Whatever's really going on here, this planet changes something." She glanced out the window just as the sun's rays spilled over the treetops, and Ben followed her gaze. "It could change everything."


	10. Chapter 10: Days of Rain

_**Chapter Ten: Days of Rain**_

It rained the whole day and well into the night, as though the sky had been holding it all in for ages and had finally been able to release it from its arms. The clouds trembled with uneasy thunder, soothing at times, raging at others. Rey would have liked nothing more than to run out into it again, looking up every few minutes from whatever minute task she'd busied herself with to gaze longingly out the window. She didn't like Ben seeing this rare childish side of her, but he'd caught her doing it so many times he wondered why she bothered trying to hide it from him. She'd grown up having to keep things from people in order to survive, but since she'd found a family who didn't care one way or the other, she seemed to have lost her touch. Even if she hadn't, she knew she couldn't conceal anything from him, not while their bond flowed languidly and open between them, and neither of them had any desire to close it again.

The most frequent activity that they engaged in was making the bunker feel less like a prison and more like a place they could bear to live in for the next five years. On more than one occasion they quibbled over the most mundane things, the positioning of the furniture being the most popular subject.

"We sound like my parents," Ben remarked, immediately attempting to stifle the tension that followed with a frail smile.

"Did they, Han and Leia, ever stop fighting?" Rey asked him then, distinctly aware of the whimper of pain her inquiry aroused in the spot where the bolt from Chewie's bowcaster had seared itself into his side.

Ben's throat tightened, and he could only shake his head once. Rey took his hand, feeling the scratch of scars that had appeared long before he became Kylo Ren against her palm. The thin niches where small blades had claimed his young blood were cold, stubborn, refusing to fade, like the darkness that still resided within him.

"Is that why you cut yourself?" she asked, already feeling the answer forming at the bottom of his chest.

"Sometimes they didn't notice how upset I was. Their screaming would drown out my cries. Even when it was about me, it seemed as though I was miles away from them. I knew they both wanted to protect me, my mother especially. My father didn't know what to do with me. They never told me about my grandfather, you see." Ben turned to look at Rey. She blinked back tears that she didn't want him to see. "They never told me that I was always destined for darkness.

"And then that voice. In my head," he lowered his eyes to the floor, suddenly unable to hold her gaze, "The voice that...told me things. Whispering in my ear when I tried to sleep at night, saying I was worth less than nothing to them. That even if they'd wanted me, they didn't deserve someone who would only make things worse for them. It...made me steal the shears from the kitchen and…" his tight chin was trembling now, and Rey squeezed his hand harder. "Let's just say I got more comfort from watching my blood drip onto the floor of my bedroom than I did trying to block out the sounds of my parents fighting."

"The voice," said Rey, desperate to bring some clarity to Ben's clouded thoughts, "It was Snoke, wasn't it? Telling you that you didn't deserve their love. That you were only deserving of pain. Lying to you from the beginning."

"What makes you think that he lied when he said I deserved it? How can you believe that I don't deserve to die after everything I've done?" His jaw was clenched so tightly, Rey feared it might break. His eyes now shot straight through the wall as though he could blow a fist-sized hole into it if he stared hard enough.

"Ben," Rey turned his head toward her, placing her hand firmly on his hot cheek. "After everything Snoke did to you, the only pain you deserve is the pain that comes from healing. The only death you deserve is the death of the monster he forced you to become." Ben shook his head, a single tear sliding down his face. The anger and the sadness in his eyes fought like two armies locked in fierce battle, neither gaining the upper hand.

"Listen to me, Ben. Snoke is dead! He's gone, and he can't hurt you or anyone else anymore."

"Yes, and so is my father." He tried to shrug out of Rey's grasp but no matter how much he twisted himself she wouldn't let go. Her hand tightened around his and her thumb caressed the edges of his lips, almost daring enough to touch them.

"Yes," she said, staring deep into his eyes, "and there will always be places that you can't ever go back to, even if you wish it. Han never understood the pain you were going through, but he always loved you. I know it." She pulled his face closer to hers. "I felt it."

"And I let him down," he said, bitterness burning his voice until it barely rose above a whisper. "I let everyone down." At last he broke away from her stare, dropping his gaze to his shoes, creasing his brow as though seeing something wrong with them. "And I let my mother down."

In spite of herself, Rey was impressed with how well he could have hidden his true feelings from almost anyone else. For her, it was as clear as the tears he didn't even have the strength to wipe away. Everything about him, except for his eyes, spoke of anger, hatred, and bitterness. His deep brown eyes cried out to be seen from the bottomlessness of his soul. Everything else faded away as Rey opened herself up further to him, absorbing the pain that eked from his wounds like poison.

Rey stepped in front of him, reaching up to hold his darkening face. "Leia isn't dead," she said. "Your mother is alive." Tears began to pool in her eyes, and she found it harder and harder to hold them back.

"Yes," he replied, glancing back up at her, "but for how much longer?"

Rey opened her mouth, but no words of comfort or wisdom would come out. She found that she didn't have anything to say to this. His rhetorical statement crushed her to the bone, and she felt as though she might crumble into dust the moment he said it. Despite everything she knew of life and death, it had never occurred to her just how near Leia was to the end of her own life. The only thing she knew how to say now was, "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I almost killed her, Rey!" he shouted, the look of sheer rage burning in his eyes shocking her more than she'd thought it would. Rey had heard of General Organa's miraculous survival when two tie fighters blasted the command bridge of the _Raddus_ during the Resistance's flight from the First Order, killing all the other commanding officers on board. Somehow, Leia had been able to pull herself out of the vacuum of space to safety, though she'd been near death when she was rescued.

The rise in the temperature of Ben's words seemed to burn him too, and he visibly flinched the moment he'd articulated them.

Rey kept her eyes locked on his, the strain in her face hardly managing to convey to him what she really wanted to say. "So you did that," she said, the words barely escaping her contracting throat intact.

"No," said Ben, "Not me. My wingmen." His voice overflowed with unadulterated contempt for the ones who nearly killed his mother that day. "Those pigs who wouldn't have followed me into the fires of Hell even if I'd thrown them into it myself. Not like my knights."

"The Knights of Ren," said Rey, seething with clairvoyance.

"Yes," said Ben, "my true comrades. The only ones who would have truly followed me anywhere."

"No," said Rey, cutting him off entirely with one look. "They weren't the only ones."

"They were all I had, Rey, the only ones I could've considered friends. The only ones in the Order, besides Snoke, who knew who I was, where I'd come from, what I'd done. And now they're gone." He was almost childlike in his petulance, and Rey began to wonder how many hits it would take to punch his lights out.

"And now you have me," she said, stabbing him with the tenderness of her statement, cleverly hidden beneath a wall of pure annoyance. "I'd follow you anywhere, Ben. And so would Leia. You haven't let her down."

"I could have murdered her that day. Just like I murdered my father." His voice was so cold now, and a shiver of rage passed through Rey's body.

"You didn't!" she shouted.

"I might as well have!" he shouted back, instantly making himself seem twice as big as her instead of just a head. "My arrogance and my cowardice have been killing her for twenty years. Don't you realize that? I destroyed everything she loved, including Han Solo. And with every bit of innocence I snuffed out," he thrust his hand out to the side, as though gesturing to a room filled with the ghosts of those he'd ruthlessly murdered, "I crushed her heart, and she cursed my name, the name of someone who was no longer her son, the name of the monster I'd become."

Shaking with the heat of unexpressed anger like a volcano on the verge of eruption, Rey pushed herself to her full height. She still only came up to his nose, and yet she seemed to tower over him nonetheless. She wasn't angry at Ben; her anger was directed towards the foul stench of the memory of Kylo Ren. "You," she spat into his face, "are _not_ a monster." Her voice was deep and hard, trembling with resolve, unused to conveying the strength of her conviction. "Leia never once cursed you, in all the time I've been with her."

"And in all that time did she ever once mention me?" said Ben, retaliating with his usual

indignance.

"She never had to," said Rey with much more confidence than she knew she was capable of. "I saw it in her _every day_ , felt it in the ache of her bones every time she woke up to face another day without her son. Your mother loved you more than anyone could ever understand. She loved you so much it hurt her to even think of you. She died a little each time she wondered where you were, what unspeakable things you'd seen, if you were dead or alive, or if you even remembered her anymore!

"Everyone thought she was living for the Resistance, but she was living for _you_ , for the day when you would come home, when you'd come back to her and never leave again. You kept her _alive_ , Ben. Do you understand? Your mother is alive _because_ of you, not in spite of you. You inspire her to fight for what she loved from the moment she first felt you in her womb, and although her body may not be as strong as it was, her heart has grown tenfold. Don't you see, Ben? You mean _everything_ to her."

From the silently stunned expression of his face, Rey thought that his heart had somehow stopped. Fearing that he might keel over dead, she grasped his arms, attempting to squeeze the strength back into them that had begun to drain out of him. Her eyes wavered desperately over his face, searching for the boy she knew he still tried to hide from her. Silence wrapped itself around them, quivering with the unevenness of her breath. Without thinking, she took his face in her hands, pulling herself up to his lips. The kiss was soft, nothing like the intoxicated one they'd shared only the night before, a night which now seemed like weeks ago. His lips were surprisingly tender, and Rey felt all the weakness he wished he could kill trembling within them.

All the love she could give him filled hers with the kind of heat that doesn't go away anytime soon. It seemed like an eternity before Ben had been revived enough to return the kiss in kind. And when he did, it was like nothing Rey had ever felt before; deeper than physical, higher than emotional, somewhere between a light caress and a fathomless touch. Ben wrapped his arms around her body, dispelling all the pent up anger within her that had waited to be born. He crushed it as he held her tighter, and it died in her stomach before she had a chance to breathe a single breath of fire into it.

The kiss wasn't desperate and heated by passion like before. The kiss was kind, daring, brave, soulful, nothing more or less than what it was: everything Rey had ever wanted but never knew she needed until that moment. Even through the bond, she couldn't conceive of just how desperately Ben wanted her then, had always wanted her, even long before he knew her.

When at last their lips parted, open and wet with desire, they looked at each other, breathing slowly into the static left behind by the kiss that seemed to have passed as quickly as it had come over them. The glow of the raindrops falling outside the window shone on Rey's face, the reflection of water replacing the tears that had all but disappeared from her eyes.

"What should we do now?" said Ben, evaporating the silence that had settled within them. Although Rey's face changed bit by bit, the constant, ever-growing look of longing remained in her eyes.

Licking her lips and lazily smiling, she said, "Let's have lunch. I'm starving."

Ben grinned back. "I don't recall us having worked up any kind of appetite."

"If you don't let me eat, Ben, I might have to kill you. And it won't be because of anything naughty you've done in the past." She was only joking, but Ben knew that standing between Rey and her appetite when she was _really_ hungry could mean vengeful annoyance on her part and certain death on his. So he released her from his arms to rummage through the kitchen for something edible, staring after her and feeling like his entire body had stopped working and he was locked into place in the middle of the floor.

Hardly a word was said between them as they sat at the cold, metal kitchen table quietly munching their modest stewed veal.

For all the mouth-watering seasoning Rey had coated their meal with, every flavor was dry in Ben's mouth as he struggled physically not to say something that would either get him killed or make him look like a fool.

All Rey wanted to do was forget the kiss entirely, but as she knew all too well, that would be utterly impossible; it had been ingrained in her memory, imprinted on her skin, it's essence seeping into the cracks that had begun to form on her lips, which she licked nervously every now and then.

 _He'd come to her in the night, a sprinkle of distant words falling over her eyes, lulling her into a place much deeper and much darker than sleep; a voice that whispered beneath all the thick layers of skin she'd grown throughout her life._

 _He'd come to her, moving through their bond like a mist of shadows pierced by shafts of light, sometimes firm and fierce like a lion, other times crawling on all fours like the wounded creature she knew he was._

 _They'd talk about things that wouldn't have made any sense to either of them in their waking lives, things that tingled in her soul, at once drawing new blood and healing old scars. The secrets he revealed to her would have shattered his bones and crushed his lungs had he been forced to tell them to anyone else._

 _No one was powerful enough to pry into his mind anymore, so he spent his days intoxicated, not in the darkness he surrounded himself with, but in the thoughts of those who milled so far beneath him he could have crushed them with a flick of his finger if he so wished. Even though the invasive hobby always left him feeling sick when he managed to stop, it was all he could do to distract himself from everything else._

 _But if he was honest with himself, which he hardly ever was, only one individual's thoughts truly made him feel weak enough to drift off to sleep while standing up. The thoughts were those of the one person who could make him give his burnt heart and charred soul away willingly; the only one in his universe powerful enough to not only open up his mind, but also his body, search through him to find whatever was left of his heart, small and alone as always. That one person was_ her _, and his weak, unsteady heart beat so fast each time she touched it that he feared it would burst, killing all of him._

 _Each night that he felt weak enough to sleep, as more and more of him died, he clung to the fading image of the woman who was, as far as he was concerned, the last living light in his dead existence of darkness._


	11. Chapter 11: Connected Consciousness

"I had a dream last night." Rey shuffled back and forth in the kitchen, preparing something that could reasonably pass for "breakfast" in the most basic sense.

"I know," said Ben, sipping his lukewarm mug of bitter caf with a precision not normally observed in the earliest hours of the day.

"Why does that not surprise me?" said Rey, placing two plates of heated meat-veg portions on the table in front of them. "And why is it even less surprising that you never help me in the kitchen?"

Ben shrugged over his mug, eliciting an exasperated huff from Rey. "I'm not just going to be some…" she paused, looking for the correct term, " _housewife_ for the next five years, Ben. The sooner you realize that and actually start _helping_ me with things instead of brooding all day, the better."

"I know you well enough to tell you that you could never be a real 'housewife' if you tried. And I do help you with things. And I don't _brood_! But you were about to tell me about your dream."

Rey stifled a giggle. "Didn't you say you knew what it was?"

"I said I knew you had a dream. That doesn't mean I know precisely what you were dreaming about."

Rey looked at him, wondering. "Why does the Force allow us to share some dreams but not others? That's a rhetorical question, you don't have to answer."

"Actually, I was about to say that the Force probably only allows us to share dreams that are important for both of us to see together."

Swallowing the last bite of her portion slowly, she mused briefly over what he said. These unknown workings of the Force, a power and an energy she still barely understood herself, were becoming more complex and confusing all the time. The faint migraine that had been creeping into her brain ever since the rain stopped wasn't helping to clear the situation.

Rubbing her temple, she asked, "So how did you know I had a dream if you couldn't see what it was about?"

"We do have a bond, you know," he said after gulping down another mouthful of now-cold caf. "I only saw flickers, blurred colors and muffled sounds, but somehow I knew it was your dream spilling over into my subconscious. I'm afraid I can't explain it any better than that."

"Can't say I could do any better myself," said Rey, looking up from her greasy plate. "Do you still want me to fill you in?"

Ben nodded, pushing his mug and her plate off to the side as though her story needed room to breathe, and turned to look intently at her.

Rey smiled faintly. "Let's go outside. I need to clear my head to remember."

"It was incredibly vivid," she began as they sat down on the towels they'd laid out over the damp grass. "Even now, it feels like it just happened moments ago." Goosebumps rose along her arms that weren't born of fear, but from the memory of sensations that had seemed so real before she woke up, but were now beginning to fade into the back of her mind. She didn't appear to notice.

"I was lying at the bottom of the lake. Don't ask me how I knew it was the lake," she said, reading Ben's thoughts before he could voice them, "because I swear, I have no idea. I was staring up at the sun. Or was it the moon? I don't know, it was really bright whatever it was. And I couldn't tell whether the sky was dark or light outside."

Ben didn't speak, and his eyes urged her to go on.

"The sensation of weightlessness, of floating freely in space, filled my body. At the same time, something was keeping me weighted to the bottom. Like...like a balloon tied to a rock by a string. I knew that even if I'd had the strength to try, I wouldn't have been able to pull myself up." She laughed. "I suppose anything is possible in dreams."

Ben remained silent, allowing his own memory of the dream to fill his senses, focusing on every movement of Rey's mouth and every sound that her voice made.

"Did you feel like you were drowning?" he asked her.

"No. I felt like I'd already drowned," she said matter-of-factly. The bruise on her temple shone as she turned her head from the sunlight. "But...I wasn't dead. In fact, I felt completely alive, as though I hadn't been fully awake before, and something in the lake had opened up all my senses. I could breathe, I could see everything within the lake as clearly as I see you." Her goosebumps rippled as she moved her arm, gesturing to him. Gentle breezes played with her hair, causing loose, brown strands to dance across her face.

Ben found himself once again fighting the urge to reach out and touch her face, which had been painted soft by the early morning light.

For a while, neither of them spoke. The trees that surrounded them seemed to carry on with their own private conversations, leafy whispers swept up by the breeze and dispersed over the canopies until they dissipated like mist in the heat of the sun.

Ben watched the small movements of her intense eyes, memorizing their every subtle transformation. He could practically taste the deep browns that mingled there with lighter hints of hazel. It had been a long time since eyes as beautiful as hers had seen him for who he really was, and for who he could be.

With trembling fingers, he reached out and stroked her arm; his skin barely made contact with hers at first, and he touched her the way that a boy might pet a stray cat, afraid she might run off or bite him if he wasn't careful.

But Rey didn't want him to be careful; she wanted him to be brave. Her eyes found his as she leaned into his touch, letting his hands wander up her arm until they came to rest in the crook of her neck. It stayed there for many more minutes while they let their unspoken words travel between them.

"There was something else," said Rey finally, her voice easing into the hazy silence that had settled around them. "About the dream. I wasn't alone at the bottom of the lake."

A new breeze wove itself between them as they drew closer to one another. Their breaths and heartbeats aligned, and the bond became part of the living tapestry of transformation surrounding them. Once again, they were alone in the universe.

"You were there with me. At least I think you were. I couldn't be sure because I never looked over, but I knew that my fingers were touching someone else's. Someone that lay next to me. Somehow, I know they were yours."

Rey placed her hand on top of Ben's, and he savored the warmth that the simple gesture gave to his heart.

"It was like...we were each other's shadow, or something."

Now it was Ben's turn to remember. "I remember the feeling that my body was my own, but my senses, my breath, even my soul belonged to someone else." His eyes had changed, infused with a lighter hue than normal. Rey saw herself clearly reflected in them.

She said, "I had the same feeling. But how was it that I could see everything while you saw almost nothing? It doesn't make any sense." A wave of perplexion swept over her face.

"Maybe," Ben suggested, "this dream held more meaning for you than it did for me. Maybe it was meant for you, but because of our bond, I could still feel what you were feeling."

Rey considered the idea. "That does seem to be the most probable reason. But if that's the case, then why was the dream only meant for me, and not for both of us?"

"That," said Ben, leaning in closer, "is a question only you can answer."

After freshening up, they both went hunting for an hour.

They didn't have much to show for that day, due to the increasing hibernation of the animals preparing for the impending winter.

Trudging back to the bunker with their gear strapped to their backs, carrying a small number of considerably fat, brightly feathered birds, they gradually realized that they noticed things about their surroundings much more acutely than before.

Rey likened it, in her mind, to the sensation of one's ears popping back out after a sudden change in altitude.

Ben felt it was more like not being able to see or hear for an entire lifetime, and then having one's senses miraculously healed. And then being able to see and hear everything around you for miles.

It took them a moment to realize that they had drifted back to the pile of stones again. The stones radiated a steady flow of energy which amplified everything they could see, hear, feel, smell, and taste tenfold. The closer they got to them, the more their senses heightened, separated, and harmonized with the world around them.

Ben glanced over and noticed that Rey looked like she'd just run a marathon in under a minute. Her face, hair, and clothes were drenched with sweat. Her lungs worked overtime to circulate the amount of air that rushed in and out of her. Her heart beat so hard he could feel it through her back when he placed his hand there, and upon touching her skin, it was hot to the touch.

Rey's entire body shivered as though she'd been swimming in ice-cold water, though she burned like she'd been struck by lightning.

No sooner had Ben realized that she might have contracted a violent disease, than Rey's legs gave out entirely. He flung everything to the side to catch her before she hit the ground.

She felt so light and slim in his arms, as though all her strength and all her energy had been sucked out. Her chest wheezed with each sharp intake of breath, and her face, overflowing with color only moments ago, had now turned as pale as death.

"Ben?" she spoke in a whisper that he could barely hear.

Leaving everything behind, Ben stood up and ran back in the direction of the bunker, cradling Rey's weakening body in his arms. He ran so fast and held her so tightly that she barely felt a thing, even as his feet pounded against the forest floor, launching him over anything that lay in his path. The forest had become overwhelmingly oppressive, and he thought that if he didn't get out of it soon he would expire as well.

In seconds, they had reached the clearing, and Ben collapsed to his knees as soon as they crossed the tree line. Still holding Rey, he heaved like a dying animal, trying desperately to transfer some of his energy to her. But no matter what he did, her condition did not change.

He racked his mind to understand what was wrong; she hadn't begun to convulse or vomit or foam at the mouth, and the beating of her heart had only quickened.

And yet she looked as though she were dying.

He couldn't tell whether she was hallucinating, as she hadn't spoken a single word since he carried her out of the forest.

A bone-crushing fear began to drown him, and all his systems started to shut down, draining everything out of him as he prayed to the Force and whatever deities might be listening to save her.

Everything had gone black inside Rey's mind.

Small lights like laser blasts flashed before her eyes. She had no control over what her body was doing, and the knowledge of this scared her more than anything else.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't slow her breathing or steady her heartbeat. Her eyes moved erratically back and forth beneath her eyelids, as though she were dreaming. Her throat and mouth had become dry and scratchy like she'd just been screaming for hours. But she couldn't recall making a sound since she blacked out.

She had the strange sensation of having fainted and slipped out of her own body, and yet she was completely aware of everything going on around her.

All she could see were those blinding lights flashing faster and faster inside her head. All of her senses gathered together into a narrow line of energy running up and down the length of her body, burning her head, her stomach, and her feet. The rest of her body felt as cold as ice.

Everything blurred and spun around her.

Then everything became still and clear.

Rey's body ceased shivering, and color flooded back into her skin. Ben wiped away the furious tears that had begun to pool in his eyes, and stared in utter disbelief at the rapid recovery occurring before him.

Her breathing and heart rate gradually returned to normal. Her eyes became still, and her body temperature stabilized. She looked seemed to be sleeping peacefully, and if it weren't for the current circumstances, Ben might have thought that she had indeed fallen fast asleep.

But Rey was wide awake.

Her eyes exploded open so suddenly, Ben jumped and held her even tighter. She gasped like she'd just been held underwater, and her lips were parched and cracking.

Rey's wide, amber eyes screamed with colors that Ben had never seen before, her pupils contracted to pinholes. The sight of her like this sent a shiver through his skin.

With a steady hand, he tenderly held her face. Rey blinked the moment his gentle touch met her skin, and her eyes slowly dilated and muted to their normal color.

She sat up and looked around her. For an instant, she'd forgotten where she was, but after a few calm breaths, her memory flooded back. She realized then that she could recall every inch of what had just happened in perfect detail.

Her face softened when she saw Ben. He looked back at her like she'd just risen from the dead.

The only thing she knew how to do in that moment was to wrap her arms around him and let him hold her tight again.

They breathed softly and steadily into one another, with no thoughts crowding their minds except of each other. Rey's fear vanished in the warmth of his arms, taking his with it into the void.

For some reason, the only thing he could think to say to her was, "What happened?"

The only way that Rey could answer him was, "I don't know. But...I can feel _everything_."


	12. Chapter 12: Ruin

Ben helped Rey limp back to the bunker, acting as a human crutch, her arm draped over his shoulders to support her.

"I feel funny," Rey mumbled just loud enough for him to hear.

She quivered with energy, a white-hot sensation whirring through her whole body, as though a hyperdrive had been built into her. Her legs still weren't strong enough to hold her up for longer than a few seconds, yet she felt so light that if she wasn't holding on to Ben, she thought she might float away.

At the same time, every bit of gravity the planet could generate seemed to want to pull her straight down to it's core. Either way, Ben was her only tether to the surface, and she found herself trusting him infinitely.

Ben was too drained to even laugh at the hopeless understatement of how she felt. He could feel everything through the bond, vibrating like the power core of a star destroyer one minute, purring peacefully as a loth cat the next. It took more out of him than he was aware of, but still he refused to let Rey fall.

Stumbling over the threshold, not even bothering to shut the door, Ben carried Rey to the living room and lowered her gently onto the sofa. After making sure that she was comfortable, he stood wobbling on his feet for a moment, then descended to the floor, sprawling himself out to release the tension that had secreted into his body.

As his joints and muscles unraveled, the blur that hung over his mind began to disperse, and he took mental stock of what had just transpired.

The powerful energy that clung to those stones had somehow focused itself onto Rey, overriding all her systems instantaneously, at once punching the life out of her and breathing new strength into her.

But if that was the case, then why, he wondered, had the same thing not happened to him? They'd been in the same place at the same time, so why hadn't the rocks affected him too?

While Ben carefully turned over each unanswerable question that appeared in his mind, Rey's migraine reverberated throughout her body, pulsating with the rapid flicker of her heartbeat and breath. Nothing and everything around her was real. She wondered if this was what it was like to be in a spice-induced trance.

She didn't notice when she drifted off to sleep, nor when she started to mumble aloud as though she were carrying on a conversation with someone only she could see.

Everything was happening at once, in overlapping fast and slow motion. She had a sense of being both inside and outside her body; seeing the world through her own eyes, while also standing apart, surveying the whole scene as though it were frozen in time; looking down at Ben, dozing just below her, and at her own unconscious form, rolled out over the sofa like a ragged quilt, shivering at the slightest movement of air that touched her.

The longer she lay there, the more actively her brain seemed to take on information she didn't know she was capable of holding. Soon her head felt as though it might split itself apart, allowing everything that had been steadily accumulating within to come gushing out.

Rolling herself over, Rey reached down to to brush at Ben's sleeping face.

Though he seemed peaceful, she knew that he was exhausted; she could feel it, the ever-growing weight over his eyelids as he slid deeper into sleep.

"Ben," she whispered, nudging his cheek. She wished she didn't have to wake him, but certain things were on her mind that refused to sit still and remain silent. When he only grunted softly, she said louder, "Ben!"

Ben's eyes snapped open, and he was momentarily taken aback upon seeing Rey hanging over the edge of the sofa, her face so close to his.

"Are you okay?" he asked sincerely. His dark eyes had taken on that light shade of worried that clutched so earnestly at Rey's soul. They were the kind of eyes she could never hope to resist, no matter how strong she was.

"I'm fine," she said hesitantly, "I think. My head's spinning. My vision keeps alternating between sharp and blurry. And now I feel like I need to…"

The next instant, Rey was off the sofa and out of the living room. Bolting towards the nearest bathroom, she threw open the door, slammed it shut behind her, and soon after began retching into the toilet until she felt she couldn't possibly have anything left inside besides her guts, which quivered violently after each heave.

Ben had gotten up almost as quickly as she had, and now stood at the bathroom door, wincing internally each time the agonizing sounds of Rey's stomach emptying itself against her will pushed through the cracks.

When the vomiting had at last subsided, Rey spent at least ten minutes washing out her dry mouth in the sink. Straightening up again, she observed her pink reflection in the mirror, wondering how anyone could look so healthy, and yet feel like they might implode at any minute.

Ben knocked, softly at first, then more rapidly when Rey didn't respond. She had unconsciously tuned out the whole world around her for a moment that lasted as long as an eternity. The deep sound of Ben's voice coming from the other side of the door woke her from her world of blurred edges and crushing feelings of silent fear.

"Rey?" he said.

"Could you come in here please, Ben?" Her voice refused to come out clearly, sputtering and cracking like a bad transmission signal. Rey had to cough several times in order to clear out the cluttered residues of vomit still lodged in her throat.

"I can't," said Ben.

"Why not?"

"You locked the door."

Rey realized that in her haste to get to the toilet, she'd unconsciously hit the locking mechanism on the door panel. Moving away from the sink, she unlocked the door and let Ben's large frame quietly enter her small realm. She was no longer intimidated by his imposing size. It was an unfathomable comfort now, more than that of any family she could have imagined in her days as a scavenger in the wastes of Jakku.

Ben pushed the rancid stench of Rey's sickness that filled the small room to the back of his mind when he saw the ethereal glow of her face. How had he never noticed before how unfathomably beautiful she was? Was it purely the effects of the shock of energy that had been injected into her body? Or had he simply been as blind as always?

He took a step forward. She stood still, held back by a barrier neither of them could see. They both felt the bond begin to close, and panic spread from Ben's chest like an untameable, internal wildfire. For the first time in almost a year, he wanted to break things, to crush, mangle, destroy. Blinding anger sparked in his fingertips, twitching desperately at his side, starving for the heat of his old weapon beneath his hand.

Neither of them noticed the bathroom lights growing steadily brighter and hotter, the energy powering them whirring louder as they stood there. Nothing else existed beyond the fraying line connecting them, until, one by one, the bulbs cracked and exploded.

The sudden burst startled both Rey and Ben out of their trance of fury. Shards of glass had shattered into smaller fragments on the bathroom floor. Rey had been cut on her shoulder and the side of her face by the falling pieces, and small, silent drops of her blood soon joined the crystalline wreckage strewn about her feet.

Rey's eyes burned, framed by rims of red skin like she'd been crying.

Neither of them had moved an inch, and her heart screamed in her chest. She didn't know that she'd been holding her breath until she released it at that moment, and everything around them faded back into focus.

At last, they both looked down slowly and saw the destruction that littered the floor around them. Rey looked bemusedly at her surroundings as though she'd just been pulled sharply from a deep dream.

Ben was the first to breach the silence. "Don't move," he said, "I'll get something to clean this up." He paused briefly to gaze over the gashes in Rey's rosey flesh, his eyes falling once more into that deep set worry and genuine concern, before dashing to the kitchen.

Once he was gone, Rey turned her to look into the mirror again. The longer she looked, watching the lonely tears rolling down her hot face, the more she wondered how much more of this she could truly take.

The edge of her vision blurred and shook so fiercely she thought she might throw up again. The distant sounds of splitting glass fibers echoed in her body. A fire had been lit, fed by the oxygen she ravenously inhaled. Burning and cold. Dark and light. Flickering, fragmenting shadows creeping in from the farthest edges of her vision.

Crack.

Silence.

Crack.

Silence.

Crack.

Burst.

The mirror was the next thing to shatter.

Kylo Ren had never been the one to clean up broken glass. Whether or not he'd been the one to break it. The little men in light gray suits came and went, and the shards would be gone, the scattered remains of his anger swept away like the crumbling, ashen bodies he left in his wake.

Ben Solo would be the one to clear the mess made by whatever power had overridden Rey's will. Not out of any sense of duty to a faceless regime that could crush him on the slightest whim; not because he'd be thrown under the spinning wheels of the war machine that he himself had helped to lead if he didn't do it.

He would do it because he knew that Rey couldn't do it on her own, not now.

And because, more than anything else, and against the hateful urges of the monster still breathing inside him, he cared for her, much more deeply than he'd cared for anyone in his life.

By the time he returned, carrying a filthy nettle duster and a grimy pail, the mirror has also been decimated, and Rey had already left.

Why had he expected her to stay put just because he told her to? Ben scowled as he crouched down to begin sweeping up the broken glass.

The longer he knew her, the easier it was for her to tempt the rage of Kylo Ren. The longer he knew her, the more he knew that she would never submit to his oppressive will. No, she was too strong for that. Nor did he have any desire to bind her to his lingering, furious inner darkness. He'd learned that lesson the hard way the first time they'd spoken to one another. He wouldn't be making that mistake again.

A fresh realization crept into him: not only did Rey's tendency towards resistance anger Kylo Ren, making him weak with nameless passions, it also awoke something stronger in the heart of Ben Solo. It made him want to stand for something, to stand for her like she'd stood for him.

He'd begun to crave Rey's titanium defiance; that secret element of fire that never burned her the way it had decimated him, that gathered him closer to her every day. The same element that both repelled them from one another and bound them ever-tighter together. It had driven him to stay alive when they first met, just as it urged him to stay awake now.

The whole bathroom was nearly clear of all evidence of destruction by the time Rey crept back around the corner. She still shivered with the electric remnants of unwanted heat. Tears streaked her pink face, tears that stung like stiff pine needles dragged across cold flesh. She felt like drink whole bottles of wine faster than she could swallow them. She wanted to shatter every window and mirror in sight and set fire to all her clothes. She wanted to tear apart every piece of machinery she could get her hands on and then put it back together again. The urge to destroy and to rebuild surged within her, strong as a scream that could make a mountain crumble.

More than anything, more than ever, she wanted, _needed_ to be held. She needed it to be _him_. The urge to run to him then filled her entire being, crushing her bones with the weight of its presence within her.

But she didn't run to him. Nor did he drop the cleaning tools and sweep her up into his arms. For whatever reason, it didn't feel right for either of them in that moment. And neither of them knew why.

"Ben," Rey's voice echoed flatly in the dim hallway. Ben looked sidelong at her from his position in the bathroom doorway. She was outwardly radiant, glowing with subtle adrenaline, a whispering energy coursing through her veins. But he could feel the lingering fragments of her inner chaos as strongly as if it was his own.

And in a way, he supposed, it was. They shared it, one and the same.

"What is it?" Ben said, taking a step closer to her.

She wasn't trembling as noticeably now, but she couldn't keep completely still. She shifted from foot to foot, her fingers fidgeting furiously as though overcome with a nervousness he couldn't identify. She seemed more like a little girl than he'd ever seen her before and he was momentarily moved by her rare display of childlike innocence.

Looking up straight past his eyes and into his soul, she said, "I don't know."

Ben's eyes gravitated once more towards the still-open cuts on Rey's face and shoulder. They stood in silence again for a fraction of an instant that seemed to draw itself out for miles in all directions. Though no longer charged by the heat of unspoken fire, charred and burned like so much rubble after a battle, the silence couldn't be called peaceful either.

Whatever wild species of silence had settled in the space around them, something had to be said for the fact that no more glass had exploded anywhere near them.

Ben reached up to touch her face, his fingers lingering around the edges of the red gash that stretched from the edge of her cheekbone to the corner of her lip. They both flinched when he hit a spot where the sting of the ragged wound was particularly keen.

"Sorry," Ben said, slowly withdrawing his hand.

"It's okay," said Rey, a feeble smile softening her hardened face.

"We should get that fixed up." The echo of a glimmer, the shadow of something more in his eyes was enough to numb Rey's throat, leaving her speechless.

She let him lead her back into the living room, gently sitting her down on the sofa, then dashing off to search for medicine amongst their supplies.

Rey could still feel his touch, glancing though it was, imprinted boldly on her cheek and shoulder, soothing the sting of the blood more than any amount of bacta he could apply. His tenderness had been enough to mock the madness and chaos within her, the lingering grasp of his eyes on her body and soul calming the inner blaze.

She couldn't sit back or relax long enough for her knotted muscles to unwind. But that familiar sense of ease had begun to wrap itself around her, cloaking the tightness in her stomach with a low, purring frequency that soothed her aching mind. She still felt as though she could fall straight through the ground at that moment and drag the entire bunker down with her. But the more she forced herself to breathe, clear her mind, dwelling on nothing but the residue left by Ben's fingers and eyes, calmly crystallizing into the cuts, the more the blood in her veins gradually slowed, almost seeming to freeze altoger.

The smart of the wounds had faded away completely by the time Ben returned, bacta and washcloth in hand, and now only simmering like the dying glow of a fire's embers.

Ben paused at the edge of the room. Something had changed again, he could feel it, a murmur he could barely hear tickling his ears, tapping faintly at his chest, asking to be let in. He let it in, blinking once to clear his vision.

Seeing Rey again had sparked something into motion, revving and roaring silently in the air around them. He blinked again, not quite sure what he was seeing.

 _What had changed about her now_ , he thought.

She'd stopped shaking, but he already knew that, having sensed it through the Bond several rooms away. Her aura was still disheveled, her face still tight and red.

But her cuts, which had been been bright and bleeding mere minutes ago, had now all but vanished from the surface of her skin.

Ben saw clearly the look of pure confusion on his face reflected in Rey's eyes as she sat watching him intently, waiting for him to move closer to her, to do or say something, _anything_. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten how to articulate words.

He couldn't say for certain. But one thing he was absolutely sure of was that the cuts on Rey's arm and face could no longer be called cuts as much as fiery scabs burning angrily at him through her pale flesh.

"I've missed something, haven't I?" Ben said, finally remembering how to move his lips.

Rey smiled, and a sublime ache bloomed in her facial muscles, shivering down into her core as though she hadn't done it in years. She would've let herself go then and there if Ben weren't standing in front of her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

He gestured to the spots where her scabs had begun to fade into thin scars. Rey looked down at her arm then brought her fingers to her cheek. Ben felt the shock of bewilderment that shot through her body as much as he saw it flash across her face. The scars, they both realized at once, had all but healed.

Pushing out a breath that could have been a feeble attempt at laughter or yet another piece of herself escaping her steadily caving body, Rey blinked her eyes inquisitively at Ben. The Bond, suddenly tuned to its highest frequency of stillness, punctured his chest, flooding his senses with all the thousands of questions running through her mind at that moment.

"What does it mean?" she managed to work into words.

Ben looked at her. "It means you won't be needing the bacta now."

Over the next few weeks, the pain that vibrated through Rey's body dwindled, but never fully left. At times in the middle of the night, she'd be woken from her fragile sleep by the bone-crushing ache in her jaw, her teeth chattering so viciously she could have shred her way through a steel wall, overthrown by waves of nausea that threatened to drag her away from any control over her body she still clung to.

The dreams they shared were still vivid, but increasingly muddled, often so turbulent as to cause either or both of them to wake up dragging breath or running to the toilet faster than either of them could blink.

In dreams Rey felt the beating heart of Laris beneath her feet each time they hit the half-frozen ground. It continued to pound in her head as she crossed the threshold between sleep and consciousness, that same steady rhythm, throbbing like the muffled ticks of a bomb counting down the seconds until certain implosion. She felt it lean against her in the day like shadow made body. A shiver spreading its long fingers along her spine.

At night, in the silence cutting into her from all corners of her mind, in those dreams that sang through her like memories or curses she couldn't let herself forget, he had always been the one sure thing standing among the chaos, the light that guided her through the darkest parts of herself. Now, ever since that day when the Force had struck her down, he had begun to fade, clinging desperately to the fringes of her soul, always nearly falling apart completely, just beginning to unravel as she woke up.

She told herself that she wouldn't let that happen in the world outside her mind, that she'd sooner drown herself in the lake or lose herself in the deepest heart of the forest before she allowed him to slip away from her. He was all she had, after all, the only thing in the universe she knew better than herself.

But what if it wasn't her decision to make?


	13. Chapter 13

Rey had been aware of a growing sickness inside of her, as though she'd been carrying some heavy, unspeakably powerful, unknowably dangerous living thing inside her that had yet to be born. Her body ached throughout the day and screamed throughout the night, sweating tears bled by the stabbing pain that struck her countless times.

The sensations blooming within her cried out half in agony, half in ecstacy, and Rey would have preferred a simple, uncomplicated pain to the hybrid stranger filling up her skin. It haunted her every movement like a shadow, inseparable from her, yet not quite a part of her.

Ben felt it almost as sharply as she did; the pain struck him in rebound, assaulting Rey's body then immediately reverberating onto him, a dim reflection of the force which had latched itself onto her. It infuriated him that he couldn't carry it for her. He'd carried so much in his own life: legacy, heritage, memories, regret, anger, vengeance. Now he would suffer knowing that no matter what he did to try to help her cope, it wouldn't make any difference. She remained in torment, and it tormented him day and night.

The stretched-out tension that had strung itself between them finally snapped during breakfast one morning. Ben stood at the kitchen counter, his back to where Rey sat at the table, eating nothing. They were both caught in a rigid net of silence, every miniscule movement terrifying them. The whole bunker had gone suddenly cold, the walls alive with a silence that meant they were holding their breath for something to happen.

Something did happen. The floorboards shuddered beneath Ben's feet. Then the mug of ice-cold caf he'd been staring at for nearly an hour shattered in his hand. The silence broke, and the stillness was swiftly circumvented.

Rey stood up so quickly that the chair she'd been sitting in keeled over and slid halfway across the kitchen.

They did nothing but stare at one another for a full minute. Then Rey's eyes drifted down to where Ben's hand hung limp and shivering at his side, weeping blood into a small, red mass on the floor.

He held it up to the light, examined it with the look of an archaeologist who'd just discovered a strange artifact, looked at Rey again.

Rey brought her own hand to meet with his, pressing her palm against the edges of his whitened knuckles, steadying it until it stopped shaking.

Time slowed. Something that felt like a soft stream of electricity leapt up through her chest, danced across her collarbone, and shot straight through her arm to where their hands had fused together. Her breath halted, and she kept her eyes focused on Ben's wounds.

It all lasted a fraction of a second, and when it had ended, their hands separated. They both released the breath they'd been holding, and the air around them cleared as though it had been wrapped up in a cloud which now parted, letting the light shine through once more.

Ben looked down at his hand, and his face paled over instantly. "Rey," he said, his voice dry and breathless, "my hand." He turned his hand over to show her.

Rey had to restrain the gasp that begged to leap out of her throat when she saw it. Like a slate wiped clear of all marks, his palm was blank; the blood was gone, the wounds were gone, leaving nothing but fading scars in their place.

Neither of them said anything as they sat on the top step of the front door. They'd been there for almost an hour, Rey's hands cupping her face while her elbows balanced on her thighs. Ben's hands hung loose over his knees, the rest of him rigid as a bone-dry tree in the desert. Looking straight into the thin gaps between the trees, they imagined the stone pile hidden somewhere within, standing still, waiting.

 _How long have they been here_ , Rey wondered. _How long have they been waiting for us?_ She looked outward, extending her vision as far as it could go into the darkness beyond. She could smell the trees, each dewdrop that clung to their leaves, unlocking their hidden, green aroma. She could taste the wetness of the air, the soothing sting of rain against skin against earth. She dug her toes into the soft ground, soaking up the essence of Laris' timber, groaning flesh, feeling the immense strength of roots below spiraling up into canopies of sighing leaves and sun-stained air above. She listened, heard the trees whispering amongst themselves, a cacophony of emotions building up, growing thicker than the planet beneath her feet. The world around her held answers, but they all spoke in different languages, none she could understand.

The subtle glow of the bond stirred around her. Closing her eyes, she looked inward. The inside of her mind reflected the inside of the forest. Her senses walked tentatively forward, moving faster and faster, until she knew where they were leading her. When her thoughts slowed, the stones loomed heavily over her, blocking out all light, throwing one, long shadow over the entire ground. Rey held her breath as everything inside her fell silent. She opened herself even further to the Force and listened.

Voices emanating from the stones spoke her name in secretive, echoing whispers. There was no way of knowing how many there were, and they all spoke at once, calling out her name: _Rey_.

She answered softly, _Yes?_

The voices called out again, louder and fewer than before, _Rey_.

 _What is it_ , she said. _Who is calling me_ , she said to herself.

They repeated her name over and over again until only one voice rose up to touch her, the only one she knew.

 _Rey_ , Ben's voice murmured, jolting her out of her reverie. He was calling her from someplace far away. Opening her eyes again, she saw why. Ben no longer sat beside her. He was gone, somehow leaving without her knowing. Or maybe she had known; the flicker she'd felt in their bond must have been a signal of him moving away. Frantically, Rey searched for him in the Force, but he wasn't inside or anywhere near the bunker. His energy had been pulled almost completely away from her, except for a faint, weakly vibrating line leading into the forest.

Before she could take another breath, Rey jumped off the steps and dashed across the field, not stopping until she looked back and couldn't see the bunker anymore.

"Ben!" Rey shouted into the stretching shadows. Her voice echoed through the trees, returning to her ears without an answer, without his voice.

She was breathing hard now, her heart pounding in her chest as she began to lose her way more and more with every step. She screamed as loud as she could, "BEN!" She still followed what little was left of the shimmering line which she knew would lead her to him, but it seemed to go on forever into the entanglement around her. When she couldn't go any further, she stopped to lean against a tree with soft moss crawling up its trunk. Forcing herself to take slower breaths, she closed her eyes and opened herself to the vibrant energy of the forest, searching where her body could not go. The stones still called to her, Ben's voice crying out in the midst of it like a single person lost in a crowd of shadows and light. His was the only tangible voice, the only one that reached through the undergrowth in her mind to find her.

Using her last ounce of strength to pry open the bond a little wider, Rey sculpted his name from the deepest fabric of her soul, sending it to him through the connection, carried by a single breath. _Hear me, Ben_ , she whispered. _Please, hear me_.

Like a light flickering on, she heard his voice as clear as her own, echoing through her mind: _Rey!_

Rey opened her eyes and ran.

She couldn't see anything when she arrived but the stones but the tower of murmuring rock at its center; nor could she feel anything but the intensity of its omnipotent energy. When her eyes had adjusted to the dim light, she spotted a lone figure lying face down on the ground, almost completely hidden by the shadow of the stones.

"Ben," she whimpered, "...no."

Rey was at his side instantly, shaking his shoulders, holding his face, cradling his head in her lap, brushing thick strands of black hair out of his eyes, saying his name, shouting his name, screaming his name, crying his name. Each time he didn't respond, the panic inside her grew, with the fear that there was no one inside the body she held tightly to answer her voice.

A single tear bled from the corner of her eye, rolling down her trembling face, falling from her chin, shattering on Ben's forehead with a splash that shook the planet's core.

"Rey?" said the voice Rey thought she'd never hear again.

Rey looked down, saw that Ben's eyes were wide open, shimmering with the fear of a child who'd just woken from a nightmare. She pulled him up and held him as tightly as she could, silently refusing to cry, only allowing herself to take long, lingering breaths, attempting to slow the rate of Ben's heartbeat with her own.

It took a moment for him to regain his wits and use his shaking arms to pull her closer to him. In the silence that held them together, the unnatural static of a forest reeling from a planet-wide shock, their breaths slowly became one again. Rey's fingers clutched at the thick fabric of Ben's shirt, ran through his dampened hair, knuckles white, palms sweating. Ben's fingers inched along the rigid edges of her shoulder blades, suddenly astonished at the reality that she was there with him, holding him, breathing with him. Hurting and healing with him.

"You were gone, Ben."

"I know."

Rey stared into his eyes as he stared into his open hands, watching them quake with the fire blazing within him. "Where did you go?"

"I don't know."

Rey stood up and started pacing despite the weakened state of her legs; she'd had to practically carry him back to the bunker. His shattered strength mirrored her own, complete with legs that refused to stand, a heart that only slowed once they left the treeline behind, and a mind that wouldn't stop consuming the spiraling world around him and the body that was its home. Now it was Ben who couldn't tame the unstoppable tremors running up and down his body, leaving a wreckage of nerves that struggled the heal each time.

The sun had begun to kiss the horizon, and they were both more tired than they'd ever been in their lives. Going to bed was as inevitable as the lack of sleep that would meet them there. Rey's eyelids screamed with the new heaviness they carried, and it was clear to both of them that no matter how much their bodies longed for it, the promise of rest was no longer welcome in their running minds.

Everything was out of place, somehow either shifted slightly or erased entirely, as they retired to their separate rooms, shedding the bone-deep layers of concrete that the recent days had built around them. Rey had never known how it felt to be so tired that even her own skin felt as though it might unravel from her body. Ben had never known what it was like for one's body to feel so dead while one's mind remained awake and alive with a screaming fury that refused to let him rest. Each time he let his eyelids fall, all he could see in place of the usual comforting darkness was an explosion of fiery light, cutting into him, burning deeper into him than he thought he could stand, then healing him all at once. It sang through his brittle bones and frayed veins in shrill whispers and hopelessly entangled harmonies that set his teeth on edge. He tried to grind out the persistent pain that thrashed inside of him, colliding with his soul, wrapping itself so tightly around his heart that he feared it might burst.

In all the years of torture and suffering at Snoke's hands, even in the minute moments that bled into the day when he met Rey, Ben could never have imagined a greater pain than he felt each time he thought of all he'd left behind. All the chaos and despair he'd caused when he destroyed his uncle's life's work, abandoning him and the Jedi Order to die in the fire. Running straight to the darkness to find some sense of belonging and purpose that he'd been denied his whole life. Now he understood with hollowing clarity that the greatest pain he'd ever felt wasn't abandonment; it was knowing that the burning sensations he now faced were the same crippling burdens that Rey, _his_ Rey, had to bear.

It struck him at the same time that his greatest suffering, the Force that had transformed his body into a quaking fault line, tearing itself apart, was also the greatest relief he'd ever known.

Without thinking, he opened up the bond that connected them through a thin wall, calling to her in his mind. The Force received his inner voice gladly, sending it straight to Rey. He could almost see her lying face-down in her own bed, wordlessly begging her mind to let her body sleep. He felt the itch of the musty blankets against her skin as she shifted from one position to the other, finding no comfort whichever way she turned.

The moment the connection shifted within her, she became still, letting it fill her up and consumer her. She was infinitely grateful for a reprieve from the madding mix of sensations and nerves battling with one another beneath her skin.

 _What is it, Ben?_

 _I was just wondering how you were feeling._

Rey smiled. _You're the one who got zapped today, and you're asking me how_ I _am?_

 _Do you feel sick?_

 _All the time, Ben._

 _Yeah, me too,_ he said. _At least now we're in the same ship._

 _I don't know about you,_ said Rey, _but I wouldn't even wish this on Snoke._

Ben laughed. _I know_ you _wouldn't. The only satisfaction I'm getting out of this is imagining all the ways it would destroy him._

Rey said, _He'd have been able to handle it a hundred times better than either of us. You of all people know that. He thrived on this kind of suffering, the monster._

 _Only when he could feel it in others and not himself_ , Ben thought. _It gave him-_

 _I know, Ben. It gave him_ pleasure _to see other people in pain._

 _Yes_ , said Ben, _And have you forgotten or must I remind you that I killed the all-powerful Snoke?_

 _You know I haven't. In fact, if you haven't blotted it out of your memory entirely, which I_ know _you haven't, I brought up that incident at least a dozen times in my testimony at your trial._

Ben cringed internally. _Please don't remind me, that was the single most humiliating experience of my life._

 _More humiliating than getting your face sliced open with your own lightsaber by a girl who didn't know the first thing about the Force?_

 _Oh, you're finally acknowledging that it belonged to me?_

Rey rolled her eyes. _Believe me, Ben, there was never any question of that. I just didn't want to give you the satisfaction of knowing that I knew the truth. You didn't deserve it._

 _Seriously?_

 _Yeah, seriously!_

 _Am I worthy of the truth now?_

 _Yes, Ben,_ Rey sighed, _you're very much deserving._

 _So what is the truth then, scavenger?_

 _Goodnight, Ben._

 _Wait_ , he said, _what did I say?_

 _Nothing, Ben,_ Rey said, stifling a yawn, _I'm too exhausted to talk right now._

Ben scoffed at this, _Am I to understand that I've somehow offended the filthy garbage-picking girl from the most backwater planet in the galaxy?_

 _Coming from the entitled son of legends who destroyed everything he had because his own uncle tried to kill him once, turning into a psychopathic mass-murderer who killed his own father and very nearly single-handedly dragged the entire galaxy to hell in a fit of rage before changing his mind and fighting for the good guys? Offending me isn't as difficult a task as you may think._

Ben laced his fingers under his head contemplatively. _Wow_ , he said into the aether.

 _What?_

 _Coming from Jakku, that's quite an extensive vocabulary._

"You're unbelievable!" Rey huffed loudly through the wall.

"That's true," he replied nonchalantly.

 _I hate you._

 _I know._

Just as he began to fall asleep, Ben felt a gentle rise in the bond, the faintest undulation in the ocean of empty space surrounding his bed. Rey had stirred again, awakening the pulsation of their sonorous connection anew. Breathlessly crossing the darkness of the hallway, she stood motionless at his door, thinking of him alone and afraid, embraced by old shadows and new fears. Endless nights compressed into a single memory lit up in her mind, all those nights since they last stood in each others' presence in Snoke's throne room, since they last sensed each other amongst the rocks and ruins of Crait. Nights when all she felt was his loneliness and his longing for her.

Pressing a damp palm to the door console, she waited for it to yield to her silent urges. The cold metal soon gave way to a womb-like warmth as Rey entered his room, consumed by the quiet of the night and the low hum of their bond thrumming all around her.

Rey knelt by his bed, veiled in moonlit beauty. She was a dream, she couldn't be real; yet Ben could never have conceived of her on his own. His face glowed with an aetherial aura when he looked at her, and she couldn't remember the last time anyone had ever looked at her like that. They stayed that way for many endless seconds, as though they were always meant to stare at each other forever, until the days stopped coming and the mountains crumbled under their own weight.

Ben had propped himself up on his side, his arm shaking beneath his hollow body. The only thing he could hold steady was his eyes on her. His full lips were parted, wordlessly begging her not to disappear. She wouldn't do that. Not now. Not ever again.

Their minds remained silent as Rey's eyes stirred with deepest understanding, altering everything within him like a breeze blowing gently over the surface of a lake. Rey climbed silently into the blank place in the bed that he'd opened up for her. Both their hearts sighed in relief as they maneuvered themselves into each other's arms. Their shared pain flickered and then extinguished completely. Rey let her heavy head collide with his warm chest, filling up with new breath then blowing out everything old and weary inside him. She wrapped her arms around his torso, and their legs instinctually intertwined, as natural as any plant winding itself around another in a steady, sunlight-catching dance.

They breathed together, slow and silent, while the bond embraced them. Something would happen, it whispered. Something _had_ happened, and would certainly happen again. But not now, not tonight. Tonight they belonged to the Force, just as they always had. They didn't belong to each other, not yet. That time would come, but not tonight.

They let the night slip through them, its serpentine, singing blood poisoning and reviving their fractured bones, replacing all the parts that had fallen away like dead skin.

Ben pressed his lips to her forehead, running his fingers through the potent brown of her hair, thinking about the liquid brown of her eyes, falling asleep to her melodic, murmuring breath.

The black, starch fabric of his shirt defiantly separated Rey's cheek from his skin, but it couldn't mask the calm beating of his heart within, a rhythm that perfectly matched her own.

 _They fell into sleep together, treading bravely on the surface of a shared dream. It felt like forever since they'd last shared a dream, but the instinct was still fresh and strong in their souls. Entering with care at first, like it might shatter at the lightest touch, they soon gathered enough courage to take their first steps, hand in hand, soul-by-soul, together._

 _A warm breath of air swept over Rey's bare shoulders, awakening the skin that it touched. Somehow she knew it was Ben's soft breathing that she was feeling in the_ real _world, the sleeping world outside the dream. Rey felt her body stir against his, a delicious movement lost within the safety of his arms._

 _The dream whispered to them even before they stepped into its realm, dozens of voices overlapping and intertwining, calling to them in one single breath. Speaking with the kind of maternal warmth that had filled Rey's fantasies and haunted Ben's memories for as long as they could remember._

 _Calling to its children._

 _Calling them home._

The morning woke with them, slow and silent, prolonging the otherworldly texture of the shared dream. Rey's eyes opened softly onto Ben's face, so close to her own. Warmth flooded her body, and she sighed, stirring a black wisp of hair away from his eyelid.

Ben's eyes opened then, slow and achingly beautiful. The intensity that had always inhabited his features had been sculpted by sleep into something almost unrecognizable that tickled a tender place deep within her core. For a long time, his dark eyes, hiding in the shadows cast by the light streaming in through the window, filled up her vision, and she let herself get lost in them for a while.

"Are you awake?" she asked.

"I am now."


End file.
